


The Fetters of Fenrir

by leonidaslion



Series: Berserker [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Forced Prostitution, M/M, Spirit Animals, Torture, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:08:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 38
Words: 201,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How far would you go to reclaim the other half of your soul?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Forward

**Author's Note:**

> [Art](http://crisisarrives.livejournal.com/24183.html) by yume_odori  
> [Art](http://catsbycat.livejournal.com/34287.html) by catsbycat

Wow. Here we finally are. I don’t want to bore you with a long-winded discussion of themes and influences and crap like that, because I’m pretty sure that by now you just want to get to the fic.

There are a few important things I’d like to say before we begin, though.

1) A point of clarification. This fic is essentially an AU of my berserker!verse, which is itself AU. As illustrated in the diagram below _(included because I’m neurotic and also because I seem to have trouble explaining this)_ , both the wincest!berserker!verse _(ie: Fetters of Fenrir)_ and the gen!berserker!verse _(TBA)_ share most of the written beserker!verse fics as a common history. The two diverge during _Devil’s Trap_ , which means that any berserker!verse fics I have written _(or will write)_ that are set after/ during that episode are restricted to one branch or the other.

If you haven’t read [Heart of a Wolf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/155734/chapters/224095), [Strength of a Bear](http://archiveofourown.org/works/155850/chapters/224295), and [Interlude: Veritas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/158682), then I strongly recommend you do so before reading _Fetters_. You’ll be able to follow along much better and it will be a more enjoyable read for you.

If you’re determined to read _Fetters_ without reading the above fics, I have written up a brief summary of the pertinent information. You’ll find it on the next page.

2) This is a dark!fic. Those of you who read me regularly won’t be surprised by that, but I wanted to add an extra warning here about the sex. Prostitution is always an iffy subject, and _Fetters_ involves _forced_ prostitution, which in my book is really nothing more than rape where money exchanges hands. There isn’t any graphic non con, but the prostitution is definitely one of the main elements of the fic.

There is also one graphic sex scene that beta goddess has advised me to warn y'all about. It's dubious consent and all around disturbing. We’re talking really messed up stuff here, folks.

So fair warning.

Okay, if anyone is still fumbling around in the dark with me, then come closer. I have a story to tell …


	2. Then

_Heart of a Wolf:_

Just a few months after Sam leaves for Stanford, John and Dean find themselves hunting what they think is a werewolf. They’re completely unprepared when they find themselves facing not a werewolf, but a _berserker_ : a man who has undergone an ancient ritual and invited an animal spirit into his body—in this case, a wolf. The berserker seriously injures Dean, and is stopped from killing him only when the wolf intervenes, jumping from its current host into Dean.

It heals Dean’s injuries and then conceals its presence from him, leaving Dean, John and Bobby _(whom John turns to for help)_ confused by his miraculous recovery. Several months later, the wolf emerges and uses Dean’s body to slaughter a tribe of goblins. Once the goblins are all dead, it very nearly attacks John in order to get at the girl they’re supposed to be rescuing. Dean manages to regain control at the last moment and, horrified by what he almost did—by the invasion of his mind and soul—he demands that John find some way to get the wolf out of him.

When they return to Bobby’s, however, they discover that the wolf has already made itself at home and has no intention of going anywhere.

Berserkers are stronger than humans: faster. They also suffer the unfortunate side effect of soul bleed—the merging of their soul with the animal spirit—which inevitably results in madness and a descent into feral savagery.

Instead of summoning the wolf, however, Dean was chosen by it. Bobby has no idea what that will mean for him in terms of soul bleed, speed and strength: has never heard of such a thing happening before. It’s obvious that the wolf’s decision to inhabit Dean of its own free will makes him more than just a normal berserker, though. The wolf has already shown that it can heal Dean—an unheard of ability for a berserker to possess—and there’s no telling what other side effects he can expect.

The only ‘cure’ Bobby can offer is an amulet to keep the wolf dormant and sleeping. It’s a precarious solution: if Dean takes the amulet off—even for a moment—it may not be able to trap the wolf a second time.

At his own insistence, Dean is kept tied to Bobby’s spare bed while they wait for the amulet to arrive. Boredom seems to be his biggest problem until the wolf seizes control while John is helping him drink some water. Using Dean's body, the wolf bites down on John’s hand, breaking the skin and providing an entry point for the bear spirit that immediately funnels through Dean and into his father.

The wolf’s hope is that, with John a berserker himself, Dean will be more willing to accept his own passenger. Instead, Bobby procures a second amulet for John and the Winchesters hesitantly begin hunting again.

 

 _Strength of a Bear:_

Although the bear slumbers inside of him, John is having trouble resisting its lure. Before Bobby placed the amulet around his neck, the bear promised him vengeance on his wife’s killer, and John has hunted too long and too futilely to turn away any help out of hand. He holds himself back for Dean’s sake, but when Bobby calls and asks for John’s help with a demon he trapped—a demon that has been talking about Lawrence: about _Sam_ —John’s will begins to slip.

Leaving Dean to finish up a job in Athens, Ohio, he flies to Bobby’s to confront the cornered demon. There he learns that the demons are connected to his wife’s death, and that they want Sam. With his sons threatened, John has no options left. He knows he won’t be strong enough to protect Sam and Dean on his own and, despite Bobby’s warnings, decides to become one with the bear.

Meanwhile, Dean is taking care of a revenant in Athens and falling in love with a journalism student named Cassie Blake. After his father makes a disturbing call that sounds all too much like goodbye, Dean falls into a depression. Abandoned by Sam and his father, and with only a thin leather cord standing between him the wolf’s demands, it feels like there’s nothing left for him. His sudden feelings for Cassie are a possible source of salvation, and he throws himself into the relationship with something akin to desperation.

It seems to be the right decision. Dean is loved, and seen, and he can feel himself beginning to heal. He has just decided to base his future hunts in Athens so that he can stay near Cassie when he returns to the motel to find his father waiting for him.

John seems dark and strange: more demanding than usual. When he orders Dean to come with him to Flagstaff, Dean stalls. He tries to tell his father about Cassie and John attacks him, shoving him against the wall and almost choking him unconscious.

Dean initially thinks that John took his amulet off and let the bear in, but when he looks, the amulet still hangs around his father's neck.

John apologizes for his behavior, explaining it away as stress from hunting Mary’s killer and from finally having found a lead in Flagstaff. Dean dutifully agrees to go, delaying only long enough to tell Cassie that he has to leave—and why. When combined with his secretiveness throughout their relationship, the story is too much for her to believe and they part with bitter, angry words.

Things are awkward between John and Dean on the drive to Flagstaff, and John buys himself a truck immediately upon arrival. With two vehicles, they can split up to cover more ground, and John can slip away to pursue the demons without involving Dean. On the hunts they do undertake together, John is an unstoppable force: faster than Dean remembers him being, and stronger.

Dean's unease about his father's behavior steadily deepens, but every time he checks, the amulet is still there, and he can't bring himself to believe the worst: that the father he knew is dead and he’s hunting with a monster.

Then one day while Dean is visiting Bobby, John shows up unexpectedly and Rumsfeld's hostile reaction to him reveals the truth: that he has indeed let the bear in and embraced the added strength it offered. Bobby draws a shotgun on John in an attempt to protect Dean from what his father has become. Blood is always thickest when it comes to Winchesters, though, and Dean leaves with his father willingly.

Now that his secret is out, John stops wearing his amulet, which has been nothing more than a cheap replica since he showed up again in Athens. As horrified as Dean is by what his father has become, he can’t stand to leave John to endure the soul bleed on his own. They continue to hunt together, which is unsettling for Dean, and apart, which is even worse because John inevitably comes back with bloodstained clothes and no explanation for what he’s been doing.

Finally, while on a job in New Orleans, Dean wakes up with his father's hand on his amulet. John is moments away from ripping the amulet from Dean’s neck and freeing the wolf. With Dean’s pleas ringing in his ears, he comes to his senses in time and flees instead: disappearing and leaving Dean with no other option but to turn to Sam for comfort and protection from his own aching loneliness.

 

 _Interlude: Veritas:_

Dean gets his amulet back after he kills the skinwalker in St. Louis, but the damage has already been done. The amulet can’t hold the wolf back completely anymore, and Dean’s dreams are no longer his own. He can’t continue to hide what he’s becoming from Sam—for his own brother’s safety if for no other reason.

St. Louis made it clear to Dean that the wolf sees Sam as its main rival in the struggle for Dean's heart, mind and soul. It seems willing to do almost anything to get him out of the way, including bargain with the hated skinwalker. Who knows what it will try if it’s freed again?

In the middle of a lonely stretch of highway in Iowa, Dean pulls the Impala over and tells Sam what happened to him. He warns his brother about the wolf.

And then very pointedly doesn’t tell Sam about John. His brother is reacting badly enough to the news that he has picked up a passenger. Dean, who has tried and convicted himself for what he considers to be their father’s murder, doesn’t want to add to the rift between them.

 

 _From Veritas to Fetters:_

During the events of Faith, Dean finally breaks down and tells Sam about their father. He’s concerned that Sam will continue to look for John once he’s dead: terrified of what John will do to Sam when Sam finds him.

In the months that follow, Sam and Dean continue to rebuild their fractured relationship. Dean manages to keep the amulet around his neck where it belongs, the wolf is quiet, and things are beginning to look up.

Then John comes back into their lives, and they find themselves hunting a demon in Salvation. When John is kidnapped by the same son of a bitch who killed Mary, the boys are frantic to rescue him. But the father they recover in Jefferson City isn’t carrying one passenger but two …


	3. Dying Days

Sam took Advanced Theoretical Physics during his first semester at Stanford: Intro to Philosophy during his second. So he’s familiar with the concept of alternate realities, each one spawned by the incalculable turnings a single event can take. He sees those worlds in his nightmares.

The demon doesn’t wait for the cabin to make its move. Hiding in Dad’s body, it reaches forward from the backseat where they laid it and slices Dean’s throat with one smooth movement. Sam has an instant to realize what’s happening, to see a flash of white through that gaping wound and think, _oh my God that’s Dean’s spine_ , and then the car slams into a streetlight going almost sixty miles an hour. Sam is dead before his body finishes sailing through the front windshield.

Or;

The demon doesn’t take John at all. Instead it’s waiting for them, incorporeal and unseen, spread out over the ceiling above John’s head. It takes advantage of their distraction when the other demons start pounding on the door to the apartment and slips inside of Dean. When Sam turns back around, it’s to the sight of his brother emptying a full clip into their father’s chest. Dean grins at him, face spattered with blood, and purrs, “Alone at last.”

Or;

The demon bleeds Dean dry, hung against the cabin wall like a side of meat. Sam watches it happen, watches Dean beg for John to help him and stop this, but John never does. Sam stares at the red pool spreading out from his brother’s feet and feels his sanity slip sideways. When the demon realizes he’s left the building, it slices open his stomach and leaves him to bleed to death. Broken tools are useless.

Or;

Sam doesn’t hesitate, despite his brother’s pleas. He presses the muzzle of the Colt over his father’s heart and pulls the trigger. There’s lightning and black dust around John’s body for a few moments and then nothing. Just Dean sobbing and bleeding to death in the corner. It’s over, they’ve won.

Despite the damage, Dean makes a full recovery, but he never speaks to Sam again. He dies less than six months later, in Baltimore, at the hands of a crooked cop looking for a convenient scapegoat. Sam’s in Washington at the time, living quietly under an assumed identity. When he finally catches up with Peter Sheridan, it takes the cop hours to die.

Or;

Sam doesn’t shoot John, and nobody dies in the cabin. Instead, the demon offers Sam a deal he can’t resist: Dean’s life, and John’s, for a little wet work. Sam thinks it’s a small price to pay right up to the day when his brother puts a bullet in his head. He’s in Des Moines at the time, up to his elbows in intestines. He’s killed three hundred and fifteen men _(most of them hunters)_ , seventy-four women, fifty-six children, and three dogs _(Bobby’s)_.

But what really happens is this:

Sam can’t bring himself to kill his father. It isn’t just because of Dean’s soft pleas from his blood-soaked corner of the room, although that certainly has a great deal to do with it. It has to do with family, and loyalty, and love. It’s maybe this moment of realization—Sam’s sudden understanding that he loves his father too much to kill him—that sends the demon howling away.

In the aftermath, it’s Sam who has to carry his family out to the Impala—John first because Dean insists. Sam puts his father in the passenger seat and Dean in the back, and then he takes off as fast as he can for the nearest hospital.

The semi comes out of nowhere, plowing into the car’s right side and t-boning them off the road and into the dirt. Sam’s unconscious for a few minutes at least because when he opens his eyes again, the truck’s driver is wrenching open the driver’s side door of the Impala. Cold air hits Sam’s face and he _hurts_ , but the Colt is still in his lap and all he has to do is flex his wrist to bring it into position. When the truck driver’s grinning face lowers into view—when Sam sees those sickly, yellow eyes—he fires.

The demon falls backwards in a puff of electric smoke. It didn’t even have time to look surprised.

Later, when Sam is sitting by his brother’s hospital bed waiting for Dean to wake up, the doctors tell him that John didn’t feel a thing: that his head was severed so cleanly and quickly by the truck’s grille that he was dead before those nerve endings had time to fire. It doesn’t touch Sam as he waits for his brother. It isn’t something he can use to entice Dean back to wakefulness—‘Dad died painlessly’ doesn’t rate all that high on the list of things Dean’s going to want to hear.

But when Dean wakes up _(two weeks, five days, three hours and ten minutes after he was admitted)_ , he doesn’t ask about Dad. His eyes flutter open, focus on Sam’s, and then before Sam can say, ‘hey’ or ‘you’re awake’ or ‘I love you so fucking much, don’t you ever do that to me again’, he opens his mouth and says, “Where the fuck is my amulet?”

Oops.

It only takes Sam a few minutes to find the thing among the rest of Dean’s personal belongings, but Dean spends the whole time clutching his head and growling, “shut up, shut up”, and Sam’s stomach is in knots by the time the bull-horned head drops back into place against his brother’s chest.

“Is it working?” Sam asks. “Dean, is it—”

Dean’s lips curl up at one side in a bitter smirk. “Better than nothing. It’s not in charge, but I don’t think that the furry fuck is going to be shutting up any time soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam apologizes. He doesn’t know how he could have spent the last two weeks _(and five days, three hours and ten minutes)_ remembering every last detail of Dean’s life and completely flaked on the berserker thing. How massively stupid can one person be?

“No use crying over spilt milk,” Dean grunts. “At least I’m not dead.” Then glances toward the door, expectant. “Hey, where’s Dad at?”

Sam chickens out and runs.

In the end, one of the nurses tells an increasingly belligerent Dean what happened. Dean immediately shuts up and doesn’t talk to anyone—especially Sam—for days.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He starts talking again when they leave the hospital: one to two word sentences, like he’s relearning how this speech thing goes. He won’t talk about Dad, or what it means for them now that the demon’s dead, or about anything but hunts. And when he hunts, he’s downright scary. One day, after he’s just had to restrain his brother from punching a suspect in a zombie raising—the girl’s grieving father, no less—Sam tells him as much.

They’re in the middle of the suburbs on a sunny day, and it’s maybe not the best place for this conversation, but Dean picks now to blow up in Sam’s face.

“Yeah, well, maybe if you acted like you gave a rat’s ass about this job, I wouldn’t have to take up your slack all the time!”

It’s one of the longest sentences he’s strung together since the accident, and the first time Sam has seen something resembling real emotion. Dean is glaring at Sam like _he’s_ the one who’s been behaving like an ass. Like Dean has a fucking monopoly on grief. Sam finds himself getting angry back, and screw what the civilians think.

“I have _never_ lied to you about how I feel about hunting,” he snaps. “I’m not gonna start now just because Dad’s dead.”

Dean flinches and Sam’s anger softens into something more painful. He wants to make his brother break down and catch the pieces. He knows he could glue Dean back together if Dean would only let him, but it feels like he’s coming apart in haphazard starts behind Sam’s back, gathering up the broken bits of himself and hiding them.

“Maybe we should be thinking about our options here,” Sam offers more evenly. “Dad wanted us to settle down, and now—”

“I’m dead, Sam,” Dean says coldly. “Dean Winchester doesn’t exist anymore.”

Sam brushes that off as the excuse it is. “Like you don’t have the connections to put together a new identity.” He reaches forward, earnest, and catches his brother’s arm. “Dean, you could settle down. Get a house—a real home.”

“And while I’m playing Suzie Q Homemaker, where’re you gonna be, Sam? Stanford?”

 _With you,_ Sam thinks.

Dean’s eyes are cat-green: furious with a hint of something savage inside—the wolf peering up at him. There’s a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his brother’s nose: nothing that Sam hasn’t seen before, but at the same time he’s never really noticed them until now. Hasn’t _let_ himself notice.

Sam can feel the curve of Dean’s bicep underneath his hand and he realizes that he wants to step into his brother's personal space. He wants to crowd Dean, wants to grab him by the back of his neck and pull him in. Wants to kiss his brother slow: tongue his mouth open right here on the street and show him that he’s not going anywhere, not anymore.

Sam stands there, stupefied by the revelation, and Dean’s eyes narrow.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Dean snarls. “Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Go ahead and go; it’s not like I need you dragging your feet around everywhere.”

Sam pries his heart off the roof of his mouth with his tongue, swallows it, and then says, “I’m not gonna leave you alone.”

“I can take care of myself.” Pulling his arm free, Dean turns to walk away.

“Oh, right, because you’ve been doing such a bang up job in that department,” Sam snorts. He chases after his brother a few steps and catches Dean’s arm again. “Dean, we don’t need to do this anymore. Dad would have wanted—”

“Dad would’ve wanted us to do what he taught us to!” Dean shouts. He plants a hand in the center of Sam’s chest and shoves him back hard. Follows Sam’s backward stagger so he can shove him again, moving with a grace that Sam finds both frightening and beautiful. “He would’ve wanted you to get your damned head in the game!”

Dean goes to shove him a third time and Sam knocks his hands away. He’s panting lightly from the adrenaline surge: from the solid weight of want hanging heavy in his gut. Dean’s pissed off and dangerous as hell right now, and all that Sam can think is that he wants to shove his brother up against the car parked by the curb and show him where he stands. He wants to find out if kissing Dean will soothe the jagged edges down or break everything beyond repair.

“That’s bullshit,” Sam says, mostly to stop his mouth from doing something more disastrous. “He didn’t want this for us, and you shouldn’t either. God, Dean, the demon’s dead. We’re _done_. Let someone else carry the load.”

Dean laughs: a brittle sound. “You really hate this, don’t you? Tell me something, Sammy, is it the hunting you hate so much, or am I the one bringing you down?”

Sam is stunned into silence again. He can’t comprehend how Dean can even begin to think that. For as long as he can remember, he’s been certain that he has _Sam Needs Dean_ stamped across his forehead in neon letters.

The depth of Sam’s need frightened him enough that he ran to college, kicking and biting and trying to get as far away from Dean as possible. He needed to see if he could find his own heartbeat instead of borrowing his brother’s. And like a rubber band, like he half suspected would happen from the start, he reached maximum distance and snapped back, hurled by fire and soot and Jess’ screaming face right into his brother’s arms.

Dean is still waiting for an answer, his face hard and his eyes too complicated to decipher.

Sam clears his throat and says, softly, “I’m only here because of you, man.”

Dean’s eyes go flat. “Fine.” He turns and starts to stalk away.

Sam stares after him for a moment, dumbfounded, and then he realizes that, no matter how he meant those words, Dean heard them with a completely different intonation. He spurs himself into motion, hurrying after his brother.

“Dean, I didn’t mean—”

Dean swings round and punches him. Sam drops back onto his ass, teeth clamping down on his tongue. Pain blooms fast and sudden, and the taste of iron floods his mouth. Sam grabs his jaw, which is already hurting plenty, and spits blood on the pavement to his right. When he looks back up, Dean is moving away again, not quite running, but obviously tapping into the wolf’s energy for some extra speed.

Sam’s skin goes cold and he shivers, stomach churning nauseatingly. He was trying to reach out to his brother and Dean just … he …

“What the hell is your problem?” Sam shouts. There’s blood in his mouth and his ass hurts where he fell on it.

Dean gives him the finger without slowing or looking back, and then rounds the corner and is gone from view.

“You’re not the only one who lost a father, you stupid bastard!” Sam yells after him.

It’s the last thing he says to his brother that day, and before the sun rises the next morning, Dean is dead.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A fire, of all things. From what Sam pieces together afterwards, Dean went in after some old lady’s cat. He managed to toss the thing out the window and onto a tree limb, and witnesses say he was on the verge of climbing out as well when he paused. When he turned around and _went back in._

Sam tells himself that Dean heard a noise—that he thought there was a kid in there or something. He tells himself that it had nothing to do with their fight, with Dean’s depression, with the wolf, with Sam’s hateful final words that he’s never going to be able to apologize for now. Even on his good days, he doesn’t buy it.

They had to use dentist records to identify the body, it was so badly burned. What Sam stands over in that cold, sterile room holds none of Dean’s grace. It’s black and charred and twisted: the intense heat popped and shrunk the bones. Sam brushes a finger along the cracked ulna of one arm and it doesn’t feel like Dean.

“It’s not him,” he says.

“Mr. Winchester …”

Sam turns and strides out of the room, walks straight down the hall and outside, and then drives himself to the motel they’re staying at.

Dean’s clothes are strewn around the room. His toothpaste is uncapped and leaving sticky smudges on the sink. There’s a French fry among the sheets on his bed, and a phone number written on a napkin in lipstick tucked away between the pages of Dad’s journal. It must be an old number; Dean hasn’t been taking them recently.

Sam is sitting on the edge of his bed with the number clenched in his hands when someone knocks on the door. He bolts up, heart shoving painfully high in his throat. Almost trips over his own feet on the way to the door.

Throwing it open, he says, “Dea—” and then stops.

Missouri regards him piteously.

Sam blinks at her. “Missouri?” His voice sounds slurred and slow: sounds drunk or stupid or possibly both. What the hell must Missouri think of him?

He furrows his brow, trying to marshal his thoughts in order, and realizes that he’s holding the napkin out to her like a peace offering— _I’m sorry I yelled at you, Dean; I’m sorry I wanted you; have a number, don’t be dead_. With the sudden suspicion that all of his dirtywrong feelings are scribbled on that unoffending square, he shoves it into his pocket.

“What’re you doing here?” he asks, going for casual. It comes out bewildered instead.

Missouri makes a clucking noise and steps forward, wrapping her arms around him. She barely comes up to his chest, but Sam feels dwarfed by her. He pats her back awkwardly, confused by the attention.

“Oh, honey,” she breathes. “I could hear you all the way over in Lawrence. I’m so sorry about Dean.”

Sam sees the body in that sterile room again, laid out on its little metal table. Sees Dean’s back as his brother strides away in anger, one finger raised in mankind’s universal ‘fuck you’ gesture.

“They said a beam hit him,” he says, and then he’s crying, and Missouri is shushing him, and it’s all true, and Dean is dead.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Missouri takes him back to Lawrence with her. Sam calls the morgue and tells them that he wants Dean cremated. They offer him the names of some reputable businesses and Sam thanks them politely before hanging up and throwing his phone across the room. After that, Missouri handles the details.

Sam tells her he doesn’t want a tombstone, but either she’s poking around in his head again or she thinks she knows better because one day almost a month After she drives him to the cemetery where his mother is buried. There’s a new stone next to Mary’s, and Sam already knows whose name he’ll find there. He balks, turning away.

“I can’t,” he says, low and harsh.

“Sam,” Missouri starts.

“I _can’t_ ,” Sam insists, starting to hyperventilate, and she lets him drag her away.

He goes back later that night, by himself. The gates are locked so he jumps the fence around the side. Thinks it’s oddly appropriate that he’s breaking into the cemetery to visit his brother’s grave. Dean wanted to have one erected here after his ‘demise’ in St. Louis, but Sam put his foot down: too expensive, in bad taste, and was Dean _looking_ to give himself bad luck? Dean laughed at him, and it looks like he’s getting the last laugh again now because here it is.

Sam kneels before the stone in grass that hasn’t been disturbed because it’s not covering anything. He lets his fingers wander over the engraved letters as he reads them in the dim light.

 

Dean Winchester  
January 24, 1979 – August 24, 2006  
It’s Time To Ramble On

 

He isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Dean must have played that song a thousand times, singing along softly and tapping the wheel while Sam dozed next to him.

“Zeppelin rules,” he mumbles, and then he’s crying again: soft, helpless tears. He leans against the stone, feels it rough on his face, and cool.

“Dean,” he says. “Oh God, Dean, I—I miss you so damned much—and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I said that, I do need you—I need—always—you were always so—you were _everything_ and I—” He draws in a deep, painful breath and then spits out, “I keep thinking that God’s punishing me. For wanting you. And I never even—I wouldn’t have—but I did, I wanted you, and then you—you …”

He loses what little control he has, fingers scraping over the face of his brother’s tombstone. He feels his flesh tear against the stone and clutches harder, tries to curl up closer, tries to melt inside the engraving of Dean’s name. He has a stone family now: he has these two plots of land and his father’s dog tags in his back pocket and the box of Dean’s stuff sitting at the foot of his bed at Missouri’s.

“I don’t know what to do,” he confesses when the worst of the pain has eased. “Dean, I don’t—what am I supposed to do?”

There’s no answer. Just the darkness, and the grass dampening his jeans, and a dog barking somewhere in the distance.

“I’m giving it a year, Dean. One year and then I’m coming after you.”

He can feel Dean’s disapproval, even now, but he doesn’t care. With a final brush of his hand over his brother’s name, he pushes himself to his feet and walks away without looking back.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Missouri keeps saying it’ll get easier, but it doesn’t. The stupidest things will set him off. Music reminds him of his brother: he can’t listen to anything without passing Dean’s judgment on it in absentia, hearing his brother’s sneer or seeing him bob his head approvingly. He looks at the dead, fallen leaves that litter the gutters and remembers Dean shoving him into a pile in the middle of a stranger’s yard, laughing and stuffing wet handfuls of the stuff down the back of his shirt.

One day, Sam makes himself a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and remembers how Dean used to make sure to get the crunchy kind: how he always cut off the crusts. Missouri finds him crying into the jar two hours later, and she has to pry it out of his hands because he can’t figure out how to let go.

“You need to get out,” she says when he’s calmed down. “Get a job, maybe meet some people your own age. There’s a life worth living out there, honey. You just have to go find it.”

Sam shakes his head, throat closing up on him again.

“Dean wouldn’t want you sitting around here and wallowing,” Missouri prods, and Sam hates her for it, but he knows she’s right.

He gets a job at a bar downtown. After growing up with Dean, he knows enough to get hired on provisionally as a bartender. Going to work is like rubbing lemon juice in an open wound every time. He keeps thinking he sees his brother—an upturned collar, the cocky twirl of a pool cue, an overloud laugh.

Girls flirt with him and he thinks that Dean would tumble them in a second. They’re beautiful, and some of them are intelligent enough to actually carry on a conversation. It doesn’t matter. Their eyes are wrong, not that exact shade of green. They don’t peg him with stray pieces of their meals for fun, and he hasn’t held their side together during a frantic drive to the hospital. He knows it’s unfair to hold them up against a memory, and an idealized one at that, but he can’t seem to stop himself.

Sam starts marking off every day on the calendar.

“That’s right, honey,” Missouri says, and pats him on the arm. “One day at a time.”

Sam doesn’t respond. He keeps his thoughts tight and locked down where even she can’t find them, but the promise of release sings in his blood. It pulses with every beat of his heart.

 _One year one year one year._

Time has never passed so slowly.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby calls in March, and Sam almost doesn’t take the call because he’s sure it’s about Dean and he doesn’t need someone else telling him that ‘life is a beautiful thing’. Missouri’s face is a thundercloud, though, and she practically stabs him in the chest with the cordless.

“You talk to him,” she bites off. “I’m too angry.”

“Bobby?” Sam says hesitantly.

“Hey, Sam. How you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Sam lies. “What’s up.” He watches Missouri pick up a glass and throw it on the floor and feels an uncharacteristic surge of curiosity. “What’d you say to Missouri?”

Bobby heaves a sigh and then says, “Dean’s in trouble.”

Suddenly Sam is back in that last, terrible week in August when nothing made sense. “Dean’s dead, Bobby,” he says, and hardly notices the pain from his chest constricting. “You’ve got his ashes.”

He sent them to Bobby because he didn’t know what to do with them. Maybe next year, Bobby can put them somewhere nice together. He makes a mental note to leave instructions when the time comes.

“No, I don’t,” Bobby says. His voice is slow and reluctant, like it’s killing him to do this. “I’ve got Scott Lasseter’s ashes. Dean’s alive, Sam.”

The world constricts painfully and Sam’s mouth is suddenly dry. He swallows and then, very calmly, says, “Okay,” and hangs up the phone. It starts ringing again almost immediately, but Sam doesn’t answer. Putting it down on the table, he turns to Missouri, who is hanging onto the counter with one hand and looking mad enough to spit nails.

“I’ve gotta go,” he mumbles. He’s already moving for the front door, digging for the keys in his pocket, so if she says anything in response, he doesn’t hear.

Two hours later, he’s well on his way to South Dakota.


	4. Found and Lost

When Bobby opens the door, Sam doesn’t even give him a chance to take in who’s on his front porch before he punches the man square on the nose. Bobby gives a pained yell and falls back. Sam’s reminded, ironically, of his last confrontation with Dean.

“Jesus Christ, Sam!” Bobby shouts.

“You son of a bitch,” Sam says. His voice is low. Controlled. He’s keeping a tight reign on his emotions because he’s worried that otherwise he might shoot Bobby and he wants answers first.

Bobby’s fussing with his nose, touching it lightly with one hand and then holding his hand in front of his face so he can see the blood. Sam steps into the house and grabs the man by the front of his shirt. Hauls him up and slams him into the doorframe.

“How long have you known?” he snarls.

“Okay, I get that you’re angry, but you’ve got to calm dow—”

Sam punches him again, across the cheekbone this time, and Bobby’s head rocks back. “Don’t you tell me to calm down! Don’t you fucking dare!”

Bobby stays still, watching Sam warily. He’s squinting through his left eye, and Sam thinks he might have caught the man just right to leave him with a shiner, and all he wants to do is hit him again and again. He _lied_. Dean’s been alive this whole time and Bobby knew, the bastard, and Sam could just … just …

Bobby’s right, he needs to calm down before he beats the man to death.

Somehow, Sam makes the hand he has fisted in Bobby’s shirt uncurl and takes a step back. Bobby is panting, blood dripping from his nose onto his shirt, but he doesn’t move. His cap is askew on his head, and one more punch would probably knock it straight off.

Instead, Sam counts to ten—twice—and then makes himself ask, “How long?”

“Aw hell, Sam,” Bobby stalls.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

Bobby lets out a tight exhale at that and nods. “I always knew,” he admits. He doesn’t sound defensive, or ashamed, or anything but calm. It’s maddening.

“Always,” Sam repeats.

Bobby wipes his nose gingerly on his sleeve and then says, “Who the hell did you think helped him set all this up? Dean’s a resourceful guy, but he can’t work computers for shit.”

Sam hasn’t worked this through in his head enough yet to start wondering about logistics, but Bobby’s right. Someone had to have gone into the police database to change the dental records on Dean’s file. Dean can surf the web for porn and prospective jobs and play online poker and that’s about it.

The fact that his brother went behind his back with _Bobby_ of all people—the man Sam called ‘uncle’ when he was a kid—is another painful blow coming on top of too many already. Sam’s grip on his anger slips and he has to turn away from Bobby before he loses it completely. It isn’t really Bobby he wants to hit anyway. When he gets his hands on Dean, his brother will be lucky if he doesn’t end up six feet under for real.

Sam lets his gaze roam around the room aimlessly, trying to distract himself long enough to shove the rage down again, and his eyes fall on a short stack of books on Bobby’s desk. There’s a candy bar wrapper sticking out of the top book—SNIC, he reads before the brand name is pressed thin by yellowing pages. Dad used to give Dean hell about that, and when Sam was in ninth grade he found chocolate stains all over the copy of Catcher in the Rye that he had borrowed from the school library. Although Dean looked guilty when Sam confronted him about it—‘you realize I have to _return_ this’—nothing had ever broken him of the habit.

It’s like staring at one of those magic pictures and having the secret image pop into focus.

There are beer bottles in the trashcan, dark brown and naked without their labels: Dean has busy hands when he gets a few in him. There’s a neat, cleared off area on one side of Bobby’s rundown couch, dark stains on the lime green fabric and a bottle of Ox-Yoke’s Best Dam Gun Oil by one of the legs: Dean again, who never cleans his weapons at a table when there’s a more comfortable option available. There’s clothing strewn around the room, and as messy as Bobby is with his workspace, he always keeps his personal life neatly tucked away. It’s Dean who spreads his possessions everywhere, like he’s trying to lay claim. Sam’s seen it in a thousand shitty motel rooms: Dean’s personal disorder fighting to make those temporary way stations feel more like homes.

“He’s been _living_ here?” Sam chokes out, and then sprints down the hall before Bobby can answer. He throws open the door to Bobby’s spare room, steps inside, and stops.

Dean is everywhere: shirts and worn jeans and a first aid kit laid out on a wooden chair. The bed hasn’t been made, and Sam thinks he can see his brother’s impression still in the mattress. Maps and notes are taped up on the walls—Dean parroting John’s habits—and a picture of Sam is stuck in the frame of the mirror over the dresser.

It’s the picture that does it. Sam was smiling when it was taken, wide and easy like he hasn’t been able to manage since Jess died. And hey, speaking of Jess, there she is, lying with her head in Sam’s lap while he leans against a tree. Sam remembers that day—him and Jess and Zach and Becky taking a day out of the study period before finals to relax on the quad. He even thinks he might remember what they were talking about that had him so amused: Zach’s decision to fulfill his final paper requirement in Intro to Philosophy by examining the Platonic ideals at work in The Matrix.

Sam takes several steps toward the dresser, moving on unsteady legs. He can’t decide if he’s pissed because Dean obviously stole this from Becky’s, or because Dean picked this specific image to pin up on the mirror like a talisman. He imagines his brother standing where he is now, spending twenty minutes to fix his hair and never once directly looking at the photograph where all his attention is really focused.

Is this how Dean imagines Sam’s days have been lately? Is he really so stupidly, willfully blind that he thinks that picture has any bearing on the reality of Sam’s life without him in it?

With a sudden, furious motion, Sam sweeps the books and spare change and stray Big Mac wrappers off the dresser and onto the floor. He yanks the rumpled sheets off the bed, he shreds the maps and papers from the walls. He’s breathing heavily now, chest too tight for him to catch any air, and he realizes that he can _smell_ his brother. He can smell leather and old blood and the almost overpowering stench of the cheap cologne Dean wears when they’re not actively hunting anything. With that scent caught in his mouth, he grabs the wooden chair and hurls it into the mirror. Glass shatters, dropping to litter the dresser and the floor below it with glittering shards, but when the waterfall stops the photograph is still leaning drunkenly from the wooden frame.

“You just about finished wrecking my house?” Bobby asks from the doorway.

Sam leans on the dresser, holding on with both hands like he can ground himself that way. Like feeling smooth wood beneath his fingers is going to help him make sense out of the churning emotions driving him over the edge.

“Where the fuck is he?”

“If I knew that, you think I ever would have called you?”

Something too complicated to be defined as bitterness bursts out of Sam’s mouth in a harsh bray of laughter. “No,” he says, staring at his own smiling, happy face in the photograph. “I think you would’ve let me keep thinking he was dead until I—”

He cuts himself off, clenching his jaw shut hard enough that it hurts. Even now, as out of control as he feels, he refuses to talk about what he was planning on doing when the anniversary of Dean’s death rolled around again. It isn’t any of Bobby’s goddamned business.

“Until you _what_?” Bobby prods. His voice is far too keen for Sam’s liking, edged with the beginnings of realization.

“Got over it. Whatever.”

Sam feels like he’s channeling his brother, here in the closest thing Dean’s probably ever had to a home apart from those first four years he can barely remember. It seems unfair, that Dean finally found a place to put down some roots and left Sam with the bleak gray of purgatory in Lawrence.

It’s an oversimplification of matters, of course. Sam knows that. There’s something going on here that he can’t see; Dean is playing the magician again, focusing all of Sam’s attention on his left hand while he conjures rabbits with his right. Still, none of that changes the fact that Dean hurt him, that Dean faked his own death and left Sam alone to deal with the aftershocks. And Bobby helped.

“Sam,” Bobby starts, and Sam hears him step closer.

His hands twitch where they’re gripping the dresser and he warns, “You touch me and I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

Bobby stops. “I’m sorry,” he says, each word slow and deliberate, “That what I did hurt you. But right now I need you to pull yourself together and work with me.”

“Pull myself … You let me think my brother was _dead_.” Bad idea or not, Sam can’t stop himself from turning around. He advances on the man before him—on the lying Judas he used to think of as an uncle, as a friend—and feels a petty surge of gratification when Bobby gives way. “I had to identify his body, I picked up his ashes from the crematorium. Hell, I went to his goddamned _grave_! Do you have any idea what that felt like?”

“Dean had his reasons for—”

“Fuck Dean,” Sam snaps. “I’ll deal with him later. I’m talking to you now.”

Bobby’s back hits the wall in the hallway outside Dean’s room and he looks surprised, like he didn’t even realize he was retreating. Sam manages to bring his own advance to a halt in the doorway, but now that he’s started talking the words are coming on their own.

“I must have called you on the phone a hundred times over the last six months, half the time I couldn’t even talk because I was crying too hard and you just—Christ, did you think it was _funny_? Or do you just not give a shit?”

Bobby draws himself up, his eyes narrowing. When he speaks, his voice is harsh. “The only reason I went along with Dean in the first place was to protect you, boy. I’ve had second thoughts, I’ve had plenty. But all I ever had to do was look at Dean to know I was doing the right thing.”

The fact that Bobby thinks he has any right to be indignant or play the wounded party here lodges underneath Sam’s skin like loose gravel. He’s on sensory overload—has been since he dropped the phone on Missouri’s table and left in a hurry. He knows that beating Bobby to a bloody pulp isn’t going to stop the overwhelming rush of emotions, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t looking mighty tempting.

“What the fuck are you—”

“The wolf, Sam,” Bobby interrupts. “It’s all but loose.”

Ice slices through Sam, and he remembers Dean’s hospital room, remembers Dean lying there for weeks without the familiar amulet around his neck. Remembers him waking up and demanding it in a panic, holding his head and trying to block the wolf out. But Dean said he was okay. He was handling it. He would have told Sam if he wasn’t handling it, wouldn’t he?

“That’s bullshit!” Sam says, but the protest sounds weak even to him. He was quiet too long: spent too many precious seconds mulling over the possibility. He tries to shore it up, as though he can make his words true if he strings enough of them together. “Dean would never let it get that far. He would never put innocent people in danger like that.”

Bobby’s posture softens, and the look he gives Sam makes Sam feel like he’s four years old again and insisting that Santa’s bringing Mommy back for Christmas so that Daddy will stop being so sad all the time.

“Why the hell do you think he’s been staying here between hunts?” Bobby asks. “It ain’t for the homecooked meals, I’ll tell you that much.”

Sam turns his head with a slow, unwilling movement, and looks over his shoulder into Dean’s room. This time he looks through Dean’s shadow, lying thick and heavy over everything, and sees how impersonal it is. No cassette tapes lie amidst the wreckage. There aren’t any girlie mags on the table by his brother’s bed. There aren’t any posters on the walls, and the lone photograph strikes Sam as more of a shrine than a fond family momento.

So many things in there that Dean has touched, so many traces he’s left behind, and they’re no more meaningful than an animal’s den. Clothes for warmth instead of shed fur. Empty fast food wrappers instead of dried up bones. A bed instead of a convenient stretch of underbrush.

And the hunt, of course. The hunt plastered on every side like a cage of paper, urging Dean on, narrowing his focus until that’s all that’s left.

Sam understands with an abruptness that is almost like being born. Dean’s been staying at Bobby’s so that there’ll be someone to take him out if _(when)_ things get bad enough that he can’t control himself any more. It’s at least part of the reason Dean did this, to spare Sam that, and Sam isn’t surprised because he knows his brother.

Dean’s spent his whole life making decisions for Sam: deciding what’s good for him without bothering to ask what he _wants_. This is … this is that taken to extremes. This is Dean not wanting to make Sam watch his final, grasping descent into feral savagery. This is Dean assuming that Sam wouldn’t want to be there for that, that he wouldn’t want every second he could get with his brother before the end.

This is what happens when Sam says ‘I need you’ and Dean hears ‘you’re only dragging me down’. This is Dean standing outside in the cold the way he always does, barefoot and shivering in winter, and not daring to bang at the door for fear of being turned away.

It’s so fucking typical that Sam wants to howl with rage.

Oh God, how the fuck can Dean think that Sam is better off believing him dead than standing by his side?

In that one moment, Sam feels something in his chest give way. He’s pretty sure it would hurt less if he was bleeding internally, the way that the demon bled Dean in the cabin, and it’s all he can do to keep standing. He’s shaking: minute trembles of his muscles that probably aren’t visible to Bobby, who picks now to say, “He told me he was worried about hurting you. Said that he wasn’t sure anymore if the wolf wanted to kill you or turn you and that he couldn’t live with himself if he did either.”

“He could have said something,” Sam whispers. “ _You_ could have said something.”

“You wouldn’t have gone. Sam, it isn’t worth dying over.”

That stings. “You mean Dean isn’t.”

“I didn’t say that.” But he hesitated.

The tiny, whispering voice that’s all that’s left of Sam’s rationality tells him that Bobby didn’t mean anything by it: that he hasn’t written Dean off as a person, hasn’t judged him and found him wanting. _Bobby’s talking about the wolf,_ it reminds him. _He’s just being practical_.

Sam doesn’t want to hear it. People have been putting Dean down all Sam’s life and, God help him, mostly he’s been letting them. Pissed as he is at his brother at present, that stops here.

Sam is silent for almost a full minute, looking for the right words, and then he says, “If I ever hear you even _hint_ that my brother is worth less than everything I can give him, I will end you.”

He can tell by the way that Bobby’s eyes widen that he believes him, which is good because he means it.

“I didn’t—Jesus, Sam, I didn’t mean anything by it. Your brother—” Something catches in Bobby’s throat and he has to clear it before he continuing, “I love your brother. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever known. You boys … you’ve been like sons to me.”

“Sure have a funny way of showing it,” Sam says. His voice doesn’t sound right in his ears, filtered through the pounding of his own heartbeat and the ever-crescendoing rush of anger.

“Damn it, boy!” Bobby barks. “You have no idea how hard this has been for me. You think this is a good position to be in, stuck between you two? Half the time I’d prefer dealing with demons than Winchesters, believe me.”

He pauses to give Sam a chance to respond, but Sam can’t find anything to say to that. He knows that he and Dean are fucked up, spinning out of control and pushing and shoving at each other and ricocheting off of anyone else in the vicinity. He can’t argue that point and doesn’t really feel much like arguing anymore anyway. His anger seems not so much to have given out as passed the threshold where he can sense it, leaving him numb and bone weary.

And achingly lonely. He misses Dean.

“These last months,” Bobby speaks into Sam’s silence, “I—having to _watch_ him like that, all the time, watch him try and make himself into a goddamned machine instead of a man. He’s been hunting, Sam, and that’s it. He won’t even give himself a chance to finish healing up before he’s back out there after something else.”

It strikes Sam suddenly that Bobby is crying. It’s strange, looking at someone else’s grief and not feeling his own. Unsettling. Sam looks away with a nervous twitch of his jaw.

“I don’t want him dead. I didn’t want to put you through that, either: thinking he was gone. But there just aren’t any other options. I have _looked_ for a way to get that damned thing out of him, and there’s nothing.”

“I know,” Sam says. As little as he likes to admit it, Bobby isn’t the only one who’s been searching for a way out and coming up empty-handed. Then, softly and with a longing that he can’t disguise, he asks again, “Where’s Dean?”

Bobby nods. He reaches up to adjust his cap but doesn’t bother to wipe away the tears wetting his cheeks. Maybe he doesn’t realize they’re there. “Come on, I’ll show you the tape.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The club’s name, Bobby tells him, is Powder. It’s on the outskirts of New York City, where Dean was working his last case—another berserker, of all things. According to Bobby, he’s been sticking to cities lately. Bobby thinks that all those people make Dean feel safer. More eyes on him, fewer enticements for the wolf.

The footage from the surveillance camera is in grainy black and white, and Sam can tell from the film quality that it’s dark out, although there’s plenty of illumination from the parking lot lights to see from. The front of the club lines the top of the screen: a solid black wall interrupted by a single door that is grey in the black and white feed, but which Sam suspects is a tad brighter in real life. There’s a few feet of open space below the building, and then five full banks of parked cars.

The screen is deserted except for a woman who is standing just outside the club’s door. She’s wearing a heavy parka, and there’s a pile of snow in the corner of the frame, but her legs are bare. She’s jumping in place to keep herself warm and smoking a cigarette.

Sam finds himself scanning the rows of cars for the Impala, and then remembers that the car has been with him for the past six months. Being separated from his baby must really be driving Dean nuts.

Bobby has the tape cued up almost perfectly because the club door opens a moment after he presses play and a man staggers out. Sam knows immediately that it’s Dean, even though he can’t make out his brother’s face. He recognizes the solid mass of Dean’s body and the slightly bowed lines of his legs. Dean heads away from the club without even glancing at the girl, heavy on his feet with his head down and his entire body lurching with each step.

“He’s drunk,” Sam says flatly. A flicker of anger pushes past the numb exhaustion.

But Bobby shakes his head. “He doesn’t drink when he’s out. I think he’s been drugged.”

The door to the club swings open to let a couple of guys out, but Sam doesn’t pay much attention. He’s too busy staring at his brother. Too busy trying to figure out whether he wants to feel pissed off or relieved. Too busy fighting the warm burn of want that has begun to start up again in his gut.

Sam is as surprised as Dean must have been when it happens: he’s forgotten that he’s watching this for any reason other than to look at his brother. Moving. Alive.

On the video screen, Dean loses his footing, or maybe whatever’s in his system has just given him an extra kick to the head. He starts to go down but before he can do much more than tilt to the side, two guys sweep up on either side and grab his arms. A light-colored SUV with its rear door already sliding open rolls into the frame and stops next to them. At the same moment, a flicker of motion at the top of the screen shows the girl who was smoking by the club’s entrance collapse. Sam barely notices it: he’s too focused on what’s happening to his brother.

He can tell that Dean is fighting back as he’s dragged over to the waiting SUV, but his movements are molasses slow and uncoordinated. It’s this more than anything else which convinces Sam that Bobby was right about Dean being drugged: even at his drunkest, Dean has always moved like mercury, all smooth speed.

Dean may not be doing well against his attackers, but he manages to catch the edge of the SUV’s door with one hand, halting his progress. It works for all of three seconds, which is how long it takes for a man to lean out from inside the SUV. Sam doesn’t see the needle that goes into his brother’s neck, but he can tell that Dean’s being drugged again from the way the guy forces Dean’s head to one side and sets his other hand by his throat. From the way Dean stiffens before slumping into the arms of the assholes who have their hands all over him.

The men lift Dean’s body and pass him to their partner inside of the SUV. They climb in after him and the SUV is pulling away before they finish sliding the door shut. A moment later it’s gone, taking Sam’s brother with it.

The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a minute.

“They took him,” Sam says stupidly as Bobby pauses the tape.

“I tried tracing the car, but I could only get a partial off of the plate, and it was most likely a fake anyway. And the only witness was killed by a single shot to the head from a Black Arrow.”

It takes Sam a moment to work through the rusty catalogue of weaponry his father instilled in his head and then he says, “That’s a sniper rifle.”

“I know,” Bobby agrees, adjusting his cap. “Whoever it was who took Dean, they’re professionals. That was a well-planned out attack.”

Privately, Sam agrees with his assessment, but he has to ask: “How’d they miss the camera?”

“Because it wasn’t supposed to be there. The guy who owns the place installed it on his own last week. Apparently, he suspected that some of his employees were dealing out of his club.”

It’s at times like this that Sam feels he comes closest to understanding the whole butterfly in China thing. If not for this small, unconnected action, then Dean would have just fallen off the earth. Most likely, Bobby would have written his disappearance off as him finally succumbing to the wolf. No one would have looked for him. He would have just … vanished.

“You want to see it again?” Bobby asks.

Sam shakes his head. No, he most definitely does not want to see Dean go through that again. Not right now. As Bobby gets up to turn the TV off, he asks, “When was this?”

“Thursday night.”

“Three days ago?” Sam blurts incredulously.

Bobby’s frame goes defensively stiff. “Took me a while to get my hands on the security footage.”

“I wasn’t—” Sam swallows and then continues, “That’s quick. For you to have started looking.”

It isn’t that he thinks Bobby is lying to him about this, or that the man had something to do with Dean’s abduction, but the timeline just isn’t adding up. Even he can hear the suspicion in his voice, though, so maybe he doesn’t quite trust that Bobby’s being completely up front with him. He just can’t tell anymore: can’t separate out what’s going on inside his head.

Sharp as ever, Bobby fixes Sam with a serious look. “Dean calls me every four hours when he’s away. Once when he goes to sleep. Again when he gets up in the morning. As a precaution. When he missed his call, I knew something was wrong.”

Sam fidgets under Bobby’s gaze. Ever since he found out that Dean is alive, he’s been so focused on being the wronged party. On being dumped and left behind like an unwanted piece of luggage. Only now does he wonder what it’s been like for Dean: trapped inside his own head with the enemy, unable to trust his own thoughts and emotions. Restricting his hunts to cities because, as Bobby pointed out, cities are safer.

Where is he now? Is he hurt? Does he think that anyone is coming for him? Has he given up? Is he dead? For real this time?

“Do you think—” The words catch in Sam’s throat, and he clears his throat. “Do you think that Dean—” His throat locks up on him again, but understand flickers through Bobby’s eyes.

“He’s alive, Sam,” he says. His voice is gentle, but Sam still flinches when Bobby’s hand comes down on his shoulder. “You don’t go through all that trouble to get your hands on someone just to turn around and kill them.”

“No,” Sam agrees. “You only spend that much effort to do something worse.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam’s anger comes back while Bobby is fixing them dinner. He immediately strides into the kitchen and starts shouting accusations—‘you should have told me’, ‘I can make my own fucking decisions’, ‘you let me think he was dead and now he’s gone because I wasn’t there to have his back’. The burgers burn unnoticed amidst the shouting, and one of the German Shepherds that Bobby bought to replace Rumsfeld runs in excited circles and snaps at the air.

Sam knows how it feels.

Finally, with his throat raw and overheated, Sam runs a hand through his hair and says, “I can’t keep hashing this out with you. I can’t—I can’t be this angry right now.”

“You got any suggestions how we’re gonna manage that?” Bobby pants back, leaning on the counter with one hand. His nose is swollen from when Sam hit him earlier, and his left cheekbone and eye are one big bruise.

Looking at Bobby’s injuries, Sam’s hands itch and he knows that he’s a long way from forgiveness. If he tries to put his head down and push through this, all of the rage that keeps bubbling over is going to explode at the wrong moment. Dean needs him too much for him to fuck around on this.

Sam lets out a slow breath and then nods. “Okay,” he rasps. “Okay, I’m gonna … leave.”

It’s the only solution that makes any sense, and Bobby doesn’t even try arguing. He just nods back and tells Sam to call when he gets to New York.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Sam thought his brother was dead, he saw Dean everywhere. He felt him bump his shoulder companionably, heard his low chuckle on the air. Dean whispered words into Sam’s ears: ‘I’d totally hit that’ and ‘dude, _Snow Patrol_? Did you grow a vagina when I wasn’t looking?’.

After he leaves Bobby’s, though, Sam can’t find Dean anywhere. There’s only that persistent ache of loneliness deep inside of him, and his own reflection staring back at him from the airport windows. It’s a face he doesn’t recognize: eyes distant, expression carefully neutral. A dreamlike haze hangs over everything, and he feels like an overexposed photograph, left too long in a solution that’s two parts adrenaline and one part need.

Once on the plane, he looks at the seat to his right where Dean should be, and thinks of another flight. He can remember Dean clutching the armrests with wide eyes but the memory melts away like mist as soon as he turns his attention to it.

Sam feels more and more like one of Dean’s masks as the flight progresses. He smiles at the stewardess who brings him his Coke and bag of pretzels, and makes small talk with the businessman sitting next to him like his world isn’t coming apart faster than he can stitch it back together. He invents a life for himself _(a wife, two children and another on the way)_ and a job _(he buys patents on promising new inventions for an Indiana-based corporation)_.

When they’re somewhere over Ohio, he dozes off and dreams that he’s back at Stanford. Jess is in the kitchen of their apartment, stirring a bowl of cookie batter with a wooden spoon. For some reason, the dough is red, and as she turns to look at him Sam sees why: there’s blood pouring out of her stomach, and it’s getting everywhere. He drags his eyes upward—can’t look at that horrible wound—and instead of her beautiful smile, there’s only the charred grin of a skull to greet him. It’s the same skull he identified as his brother’s.

Sam runs from her. He runs out of the apartment and onto the street where John is playing catch with a small boy dressed in oversized Salvation Army clothes. At first Sam thinks it’s Dean, but then he looks closer and recognizes himself. Boy Sam ignores the scrutiny and tosses the ball back to his _(their?)_ father.

“Dad!” Sam shouts, sprinting to John’s side and grabbing his arm.

John looks over at him lazily, a thin line of stitching across his neck where his head came off in the accident. “Hey, son, what’s up?”

“Where’s Dean? I need—I need to find him.”

John’s brow furrows. “Dean? Who the hell are you talking about, Sammy?”

Sam tightens his grip. “Dean, your _son_. Your firstborn. Dean, my brother, damn it!”

“I have no son by that name,” John says coldly, turning back to his game of catch. The ball soars high through the air in a red arc and Sam realizes it isn’t a ball at all but a heart, bruised and battered from being tossed back and forth between them and that’s when he wakes up screaming and manages to startle the economy section into a minor panic.

Freud was a fucking asshole.


	5. Chasing Ghosts

New York is frozen, but Sam’s too worn out to notice. Despite his exhaustion, he makes Powder his first stop once his plane lands. He wanders around the parking lot for almost thirty minutes before going inside, trying to find some trace of his brother on the cold asphalt. He stands roughly where he thinks Dean was first grabbed and doesn’t feel much of anything. The thumpa-thumpa of bass is emanating out from the club behind him like the world’s largest heart, and there are clumps of people laughing a few rows away by a beat-up sedan, and it’s quiet in Sam’s head.

When he finally works up the nerve to go inside, he finds Powder packed with feverish twenty-somethings. There are more people here than he expected to find on a Monday night, especially after a shooting, and for a few minutes he hangs back by the door, bewildered. Then bits and pieces of different conversations start to sink in— _right outside the front door, no one knows who did it, the papers say it was a professional_ —and he realizes what’s going on.

These people are here _because_ of the murder. They want to sniff around: get a little vicarious rush. He wonders with a flare of anger whether they’d be hotter for it if they knew that the girl’s murder was only half of the picture. They’d probably fall all over each other to watch the tape of his brother’s abduction.

 _‘Well, I’ll say it again. Demons I get: people are crazy.’_

“Dean?” Sam blurts, turning around. The word is out of his mouth before he realizes that the voice was in his head, just a half-buried memory. He pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers of his left hand and takes a shuddering breath.

 _Pull it together, Sammy,_ Dean’s voice whispers again, and there’s the phantom feel of a hand resting between his shoulder blades. _I’ve got you._

 _Dean,_ Sam thinks, and rushes outside to puke in privacy.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He comes back the next night. Rested and forewarned, he’s better prepared for the noise and the crowds. Although his chest tightens alarmingly, his stomach stays where it’s supposed to and his vision remains clear. He takes his time, just drifting around the edges of the feverish throng at first: letting himself adjust. When he feels settled enough, he edges in and starts asking questions.

Everyone he finds who was here that night remembers Dean. Sam has never been the jealous type, but he feels jealous now, listening to them talk. It’s partially because these strangers were in the same room as his brother only five days ago, breathing Dean’s air when Sam still didn’t know he was alive. Mostly, though, it’s the _way_ they talk about him.

 _Gorgeous_ , they say, and _beautiful_. The Dean they paint with their words is unapproachable, sculpted grace. Even the guys have to admit that he was … compelling. One girl says, in complete seriousness, that she didn’t think he was real until her friend saw him too.

When Sam swallows his own bitterness and says that no one’s that good looking, the girl agrees with him.

Sam gapes at her a little. “But you just said—”

“Oh, he was hot, sure. But it was more the way he moved, you know?” She sounds wistful. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move like that, so comfortable with their body, you know? It was kind of like watching a—”

“Wolf,” Sam says. His voice sounds dull in his own ears, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Instead her eyes light in recognition as she nods.

“Yeah, just like.”

“Did he talk to anyone?” he asks, trying to steer the conversation back onto less painful paths.

Unlike the thirty-odd other people Sam has talked to so far, this girl nods. “Oh, sure. For almost ten minutes, I think.”

Sam suddenly wishes he paid more attention to her name, but all he can remember is that it was something like Sherri or Sharon. Maybe Shelly. He thinks he could kiss her.

“Guy or girl? Do you know who? A name, maybe?”

“Well, that’s why I remember. He was talking to Megan Capel.”

That name sounds vaguely familiar for some reason, but Sam can’t place it. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, who?”

“You know, that girl who got shot.” Sherri/Sharon gives a full-bodied shudder that’s obviously faked. “It’s kinda creepy, isn’t it? One minute you’re scoring the hottest guy in the place, the next you’re … well … worm food.”

She’s looking at him like she’s hoping he’ll comfort her, but all Sam can see in his head is that grainy surveillance video. The tiny figure at the top of the screen crumpling as Dean is dragged toward the waiting SUV.

Flushed and a little dizzy, Sam excuses himself and stumbles outside. The cold air and silence hit him with a shock, making his breath stutter. He glances to the side where the girl on the tape—Megan Capel—was standing.

Blood stains asphalt unless you spend a lot of time washing it off, but there’s no indication that someone was killed here except for a small bunch of daisies. As he watches, the wind catches one of them and tumbles it off into the darkness.

Sam leans against the wall and dials Bobby on his cell. When Bobby picks up, he asks, “What do you know about Megan Capel?”

“The girl who was killed?” Bobby says, sounding surprised. “Not much. I just assumed she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Sam bites back on all the names he wants to call the man right now—on accusations of laziness and stupidity that he learned from his father—and simply says, “Dean went to Powder to see her.”

Bobby swears, low and angry. Looks like he doesn’t like being blindsided any more than Sam does. There’s the muffled sound of papers being shuffled and then Bobby’s back with: “She lived in Queens with a roommate: you want the address?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s ten o’clock at night when Sam knocks on Regina Katz’s door, but he can’t wait until morning. Dean’s clock is ticking, and Sam has wasted enough time on his own emotions already. He has an excuse ready when the door opens, revealing a sallow young woman with skittish eyes and fire engine red hair, but it turns out he doesn’t need it. The smell of pot is strong in the apartment, and Regina is so relieved that he isn’t here to bust her but to ask some follow up questions about her roommate that she swings the door open wide and invites him in for coffee. The question of why he’s working so late never comes up.

Interrogation is an art form Sam excels at: one of the few areas John cared about where he’s better than Dean. Dean was never patient enough, always pushing too hard to get to the information and unwilling to try coaxing it out through gentler methods. Sam’s never had a problem with a slow approach. He knows how to work the sympathetic angle when it’s necessary, and when he needs to relax back into a couch with a sprung back and loosen his tie a bit. Regina stares his throat without even bothering to hide that she’s looking, and Sam offers her a slow smile.

She tells him everything. Most of it he already knows because Bobby read the police records to him over the phone on his way here, but when she’s finished going over the basics she chews on a strand of hair and watches him. He can tell that she isn’t tapped out yet.

“Anything else you could tell me about Megan?” he prods, and even goes so far as to take a sip of the black sludge she made for him. It tastes like she mixed up the coffee grinds with her weed stash, but he manages to keep a straight face. “Great coffee,” he lies, and her eyes light up.

“You want some cookies with that? I think I got some Oreos around here somewhere.” She gets up and starts looking underneath the piles of trash that litter the floor. If she thinks Sam’s going to put anything else she offers him down his throat, she’s higher than he thought.

“Maybe later,” he says, putting his coffee cup back down on the table. “You sure you don’t know anything else, Regina? Maybe why she went to that club on that particular night?”

She glances at him, lip caught between her teeth. Her fingers snap nervously against her thigh.

“Cause my boss is really riding my ass on this one,” Sam adds, and sets his face in the earnest, hopeful expression that generally gets him what he wants.

Regina licks her lips and inches closer. “Megs was broke,” she says, and then stops. Glances nervously at the door.

Sam resists the impulse to get up and shake the truth out of her. If he pushes, she’ll clam up. If he waits, she’ll spill everything. Sam knows that the same way he always knows what angle to take with leads, following the trail laid down by facial ticks and body tells. Right now, he can see that Regina Katz has a chunk of knowledge that terrifies her. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she knows: is afraid of some kind of reprisal. But she also wants to tell someone.

She wants to tell _him_.

Waiting is hard, especially with what’s at stake, but Sam has had a lot of practice playing this particular game with his brother. Talking with Dean about important things—chick flick shit—always has to be handled with the same gentle pushes and strained silences. Like dealing with a skittish animal.

“Megs was broke,” Regina repeats finally. “And then, three weeks before she got popped, she starts spending like she was Paris Hilton or something. I asked her where it came from, you know? Cause I didn’t want no dirty money coming into my place.”

She adds the last in a rush that doesn’t sound true, and Sam suspects that what Regina was really interested in was the possibility of getting some of that cash for herself. As if Sam gives a shit about anyone’s petty desires and vices right now.

“But like I told the other cops, Megs, she says it’s for a favor for a friend. ‘What kind of a favor?’ I ask, and she tells me to mind my own beeswax.”

She stops then, looking a little cross, and Sam can tells she’s remembering the argument. This is all still old information, right there in black and white in the police reports, but Sam has a feeling he knows what she was holding back now.

“Did you ever find out what the favor was?” he prods, leaning forward on his knees.

Regina refocuses on him, brow furrowed. Sam keeps his face reassuring, and eager, and trustworthy. This is the moment that counts, the make-or-break heartbeat that comes in every interrogation. Because Regina’s been asked that question before, and she’s lied every time.

But now her face smoothes out and she says, “I think it had to do with drugs. I saw her stick something in her purse that night she got shot. This little glass tube like in the movies, you know? Like coke or some grade A heroin or something. I, uh, woulda called in and reported her, ‘cept I had this splitting headache and all. And then, uh, what with her getting killed and all I—I was scared. You ain’t gonna tell anyone I saw, right? Or—or maybe I could get some protection?”

She sounds close to tears and Sam wonders for the first time if she’s on something stronger than weed. In another time and place, he’d be concerned about her, would spend some time consoling her and maybe gently steer her toward the nearest rehab clinic. Tonight, though, he’s balanced on the razor sharp edge of understanding what happened to Dean, and he can’t waste even a second.

He isn’t sure, later, exactly what he says to calm Regina down enough that he can sprint down to the first floor of the apartment building and out onto the street. A cab takes him to NYPD headquarters, and he somehow manages to talk his way past the front desk and into an interrogation room where a helpful officer brings him everything they have on the ‘Wolfman Murders’.

When he’s done reading through the file, Sam sits back in his chair and stares at his reflection in the one-way glass while tiny shudders run through his muscles. He can’t tell if he’s frightened or furious or a sickening combination of both.

Dean came to New York to investigate a series of ‘savage attacks’. The victims’ bodies were literally ripped apart, and their hearts removed. The killer carved images into the bones. Moons and jagged wolves, and other symbols that the police seem to think are arrows, but which Dean would have recognized, as Sam does, as the rune teiwaz: the mark of the god Tyr.

Tyr, who lost his hand while binding the great wolf Fenrir, and who was, according to some, the first berserker.

There was one victim a night for almost three weeks before Dean was taken, and then the murders stopped. Nineteen victims in all and the police had no leads and only one witness.

No witnesses, now.

Sam wonders what Megan told Dean when he cornered her in the club. He wonders what sob story she offered, and how she managed to slip something into his drink—water, according to the bartender—without him noticing. Without him smelling or tasting it with those heightened senses of his.

He wonders whether she actually watched the murder she claimed to have seen. Wonders whether she cared about all those deaths, and how the bastards who took Dean got her to wait outside that night: whether she’d been at all worried about the possibility of a double cross.

What Sam _knows_ as he slowly makes his way back to his motel is this:

Dean was lured here by a series of murders specifically designed to attract his attention.

Working for the man or men who were executing the murders, Megan Capel set herself up as the only possible witness. When Dean arranged a meeting with her, she drugged him and was later rewarded for her efforts with a bullet to the head.

The price she put on Dean’s life is thirty thousand dollars: a near fortune to someone like Megan or Regina.

Human souls are selling cheap these days.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The trail doesn’t just go cold after that: it vanishes to nothing. No one at Powder remembers anything about the men who followed Dean outside, and although Bobby finally locates the SUV, it’s found abandoned and wiped clean in the long-term parking lot at JFK. The blood money Megan Capel deposited into her account was cash, so there’s no lead there either.

Sam goes through his father’s old contact list, taped to the inside cover of the journal, and finds three psychics—legit, according to John—either in or neighboring New York City. The first is an older woman with thinning grey hair, and when he hands her one of Dean’s old shirts, all she gets is a strange wash of grey and an impression of iron bars.

The second psychic—a man named Lewis Ferron—gets the same images but tells Sam that he’ll try to push past them to whatever the grey is hiding. A moment later, he lets out a hoarse scream and blood rushes from his nose. While Sam is waiting for the paramedics, Lewis grips his hand and mutters something about death magic and warding rituals.

The man dies before they get to the hospital, and when Sam knocks on the third psychic’s door, the short Haitian woman on the other side takes one look at him _(into him, through him)_ and slams it again. “You done be messin with some bad mojo, and I doan hold no truck with that!” she shouts through the peeling wood.

No one with any real supernatural power will so much as speak to him after that.

Sometime during the third week of fruitless searching, Sam realizes that he isn’t feeling much of anything anymore. He thinks that between Dean being alive, Bobby _knowing_ about it, and Dean being gone again, he may have permanently fried some essential circuit in his brain. He should probably be concerned, but the only emotion left to him, firing on repeat like a gun with the trigger stuck, is restless dread.

Time is sliding through his fingers like a greased cartridge. He doesn’t know who has Dean, or why, or what they’re doing to him. Hell, for all Sam knows, his brother could be dead by now—for real this time: no take backs.

After a month, the credit card he’s been using for the motel goes bad and he has to move. He still has a few more cards stashed in his wallet, holdovers from the old days, but he feels strangely reluctant to use them. These are cards Dean applied for and handed to him with a grin, and he can’t shake the irrational feeling that as long as the credit line is still good, he’ll get his brother back in one piece.

Funny what the human brain will come up with.

He scrapes together enough cash to rent himself a shit hole of a motel room for four days and then starts filling out new card applications. As he writes, it isn’t Dean he remembers—chuckling and grinning as he comes up with the most outlandish names—but Dad. Dad hunched over a worn table with a weary expression as he filled out application after application while Dean read comics on the bed and Sam looked over his father’s shoulder. He’s seven in that particular memory, too young to know it was wrong: too young to know there was anything out in the night.

Sam pauses with his hand clenched on the pen and blinks back sudden tears. It’s stupid: he’s sitting in the roach-infested motel room with ten dollars and a couple of fraudulent credit cards he can’t bear to use the only thing standing between him and starvation. He’s sitting here sobbing over a credit card application and feeling nothing inside. He doesn’t even know who he’s crying for: Dad or Dean? Himself? Hell, maybe all three of them.

He lives off Ramen and filched salad bar condiments for the next couple of days and then an envelope shows up for him at the front desk with a check from Missouri tucked inside. Sam calls her up and thanks her, and she breaks down crying over the phone. Slightly bewildered, he asks her what’s wrong.

“Sam, honey, it ain’t me: it’s you,” she says.

He still doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he thanks her again and promises to call and then hangs up and goes to get his first real meal since his card crashed.

A few days later, there’s another envelope waiting for him: this one from Bobby. It contains a check from Singer Salvage to the tune of six hundred dollars and a note.

 

_Missouri said you could use this. Call me if you find anything. Or if you just need to talk._

 _-B_

 

Sam doesn’t call Bobby, not sure if he’s afraid of rousing his anger again or terrified that he still won’t feel anything but the clock ticking Dean’s life away. He cashes the check, though. He isn’t quite proud enough to send it back.

Between the money Bobby and Missouri sent him, he manages to stay at the Hideaway Bunk until the new cards come. Then he moves to the other side of the city, takes on another name, and passes a thin piece of plastic to the weasel-faced man behind the desk. He still needs some kind of actual cash flow, though—wants to save the cards to keep a roof over his head—and he can’t keep relying on Missouri and Bobby to bail him out.

Holding a job isn’t an option. It’s pointless to spend all of his time walking the streets hunting for a new lead, but his skin itches whenever he’s in one place for too long. His nights are spent at Powder under the deluded, desperate hope that the bastards who took Dean will arbitrarily deposit him back there.

There’s only one quick, easy method of acquiring money left to him, and once or twice a week he finds himself abandoning Powder for the smaller, dingier bars across the water in Jersey. He picks his destinations at random, his only criteria being a packed house and a pool table. Pulling his own fingernails out one by one would probably be more enjoyable: Dean’s ghost hangs over this world in thick, greasy smudges. The entire time Sam holds the cue in his hands, there’s a heavy pressure in his chest as if he’s almost—but not quite—on the verge of feeling.

Those nights his dreams are filled with a restless, Lovecraftian assemblage of bars and motel rooms. He runs from one rotting, mildewed room to another through a series of interconnecting hallways—or maybe it’s the same hallway in different places, because they’re all identical: they’re all the upstairs hallway of their old house in Lawrence.

Smoke chokes the air like a warning. Ash flakes from the walls and puffs up underneath his feet. It lands like snowflakes in his panting mouth. The contrast between fiery hall and dank rooms shocks his system as he sprints endlessly from one to the other and back again. He’s searching for something—something precious, something vital—but he can never remember just what’s missing. What’s been stolen from him.

When Sam wakes, it’s with tears on his cheeks and Dean’s name still hanging in the cool, unburnt air of his motel room.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Four months into his futile search, at the Moonlight Motel and on his third credit card, Sam goes to sleep one night thinking of Dean. That in itself isn’t anything new—he thinks of Dean these days the way he imagines devout priests think of God, with a prayer in every heartbeat—but this time his mind wanders to the memory of one summer day when he was sixteen and Dad was gone on a hunt.

They were in Connecticut, in the middle of an excruciating heat wave, and the air conditioning in the motel room where they were staying was broken. Sam was miserable in the soupy air, sticking to every surface and spending twenty minutes with his head stuck underneath the bathroom sink until the metallic water coming out started to feel even hotter than the air.

Dean dragged him outside and half-enticed, half-goaded him the two and a half miles to a small, secluded lake he’d heard about from one of the motel maids. They both stripped when they got there, plunging in even before their clothes hit the dirt and coming up shaking water from their hair like dogs.

On the edge of sleep, Sam is weary enough to admit that his desire isn’t a recent thing. Because he remembers Dean’s chest vividly, with its splatter of freckles in the shape of a ginkgo leaf just above the left nipple. He remembers each rivulet of water sliding across his brother’s broad shoulders, remembers the flash of Dean’s teeth in a rare, unguarded smile. He remembers his mouth going dry as he watched Dean haul himself out of the water after, all sleek muscles and grace. Remembers being confused and a little alarmed at his reaction: dwelling on it as he followed his brother ashore.

Then Dean quirked an eyebrow at him and said, “Don’t wanna alarm you, dude, but there’s a leech chomping on your ass.” By the time Sam calmed down enough to realize that Dean was yanking his chain, he’d forgotten that he was anything but annoyed with his brother.

But yeah, this sickness of his isn’t anything new.

As if to punish him for denying that part of himself for so many years, when Sam finally succumbs to sleep, his dream takes him back to that day. It’s real enough that he can feel the pressure of the moisture-thick air on his skin and the gentle current that he and Dean create as they move through the water. Everything flows just the way it’s supposed to until the moment when Dean is supposed to make his oh-so-witty leech comment, and instead makes a move on Sam.

Dean’s hand is softer than it has any right to be, the way he’s been brought up, and Sam would tease his brother about using hand moisturizer if he wasn’t too busy trying to catch his breath. That’s Dean’s hand wrapped around his cock, jacking him slow and steady. That’s Dean’s voice, muttering filthysexy things as he works Sam to fullness: _come on, baby, so fucking hot like this, want you to come on me, gonna feel so good._

Then there’s one of those dream stutters and they’re in a featureless motel room that could be any one of a hundred they’ve stayed at over the years. Dean is spread out and shaking beneath Sam, on his back with his knees bent and his legs parted, and Sam is plunging into that tight heat, thrusting hard and deep as he bites at that ginkgo-shaped constellation on his brother’s chest. Dean’s full lips are parted in a pant, and it’s sinful how turned on he looks, hard cock bumping into Sam’s stomach as Sam rocks into him.

“Sammy,” Dean moans, like he’s on fire, like he’s praying, and Sam’s orgasm slams into him and

thrusts him out of the dream into his bed. He’s confused for a moment because the room looks familiar, and there’s the expected feel of moisture wetting his cheeks, but for some unexplained reason the blankets are damp around his crotch.

He reaches a hand down, cautious, and the sensitivity of his slowly softening cock brings everything home at once: he’s twenty-three _(not sixteen)_ , and in New York _(not Connecticut)_ , and he just had a wet dream about his brother. His brother who’s missing and being tortured right now for all Sam knows and oh _God_ , how the fuck could he do this to Dean?

Sam stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, stripping off his sticky boxers as he goes. He turns on the shower and gets in without waiting for the water to heat up. Stands there shivering and nauseated and thinks about how the only thing he really wants to do right now is go back to bed and find that dream again. He wants to hear Dean say his name over and over, worshipful and burning: wants to plunge into his brother hard enough and deep enough that they’ll dissolve into one person.

Instead, he finishes showering and then, even though it’s only four in the morning, he gets dressed and heads out for the day.

He can still feel Dean’s hands on his skin.


	6. Desperate Measures

From the outside, and despite the general degeneracy of the neighborhood, the church is small and immaculate. In fact, ‘immaculate’ is its name: St. Mary of the Immaculate Heart. It’s only four blocks from the Moonlight Motel, so Sam has been passing it nearly every day, but up until now he’s only been paying it the most cursory of attention.

He turned his back on God when He took Dean away the first time.

He wouldn’t be standing out front staring at it now except that he can’t forget the feel of being buried in his brother and, when coupled with the driving need to find Dean already, the guilt is driving him insane. He needs some release—needs _forgiveness_ —and if he can’t get that from Dean, then maybe this will be enough.

Sam doesn’t think about his mother much, but she’s on his mind as he slinks inside the church. He has no idea what she was like—can only go by Dean’s stories and a ghost he saw for less than a minute—but he can almost feel her presence as he crosses the threshold. This is her place, after all: it bears her name and Sam has long since stopped believing in coincidences.

He can’t tell if she hates him or not. She should, the way he’s fucked up with Dean—first Stanford, then Dad’s death and the argument that came after, and as if that weren’t enough, there’s still that sick desire he has to sink underneath his brother’s skin: to taste him. He’s the one who should have apologized to her.

There are more signs of neglect inside the church than without, as though the priests have decided to put all of their money and effort into drawing people inside and don’t much care whether they get anything out of the Mass once they’re in the seats. There aren’t enough candles to fill the rusting sconces, and the floors are coated with a thick layer of grime. The pews are rickety: some of them bear crude carvings that the priests have only made a half-hearted attempt to scrub away: _Lil G Wuz Here, Jesus Can Suck My Cock, Father Humphry Gave Me AIDS – Alter Boy_.

The people here have given up on God, or maybe He’s given up on them: either way it amounts to the same thing. The whole dismal, uncaring air makes Sam’s chest ache, but it feels right for his purpose. He would have been too ashamed to make this particular act of contrition in a clean place.

Although it’s halfway through the posted time for confession, there’s no sign of anyone in the nave. The other churches Sam has been to have never had actual lines, of course—confession isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean—but there’s usually a good crowd of people in the pews, either waiting their turn or completing whatever penance they’ve been assigned. Here, Sam’s only company is a few pigeons roosting in the organ pipes.

He heads over to the confessional, thankful that this church is old enough to be equipped with a box: this is going to be hard enough to confess without having to look the priest in the eye while he does it. Just outside the door, he hesitates, overcome with the certainty that the priests have given up on this ritual as thoroughly as the parishioners and there’s no one home. That means that Sam will have to hunt someone down, and he doesn’t think he’s quite dedicated enough to do that. His skin is already itching for him to get out of here.

This is a dead place, and he doesn’t belong.

Sam is about to turn tail and run when a warm voice from the priest’s side of the confessional calls, “I’m here, son. Come on in.”

The cushion on the kneeler is little more than a layer of fabric, but Sam drops down on it anyway. Folding his hands on the narrow, dust-covered rail, he faces the slatted window and waits for the priest to intone the blessing. Once that bit of ritual is over with, he licks his lip and begins.

He gets as far as “It’s been one year since my last confession” before he realizes that he doesn’t have anything to confess.

Sure, there are things he could say—‘I’ve been having lustful thoughts about my brother,’ for starters—but for a confession to work you actually have to repent your sins. And Sam has just come to the startling realization that he doesn’t repent feeling this way about Dean. He _can’t_.

It isn’t that he’s comfortable with the depth and direction of his feelings for his brother: he still feels wrong, and the guilt of thinking of Dean like that is bitter and thick on his tongue. But guilt doesn’t necessarily equal repentance. He would welcome another dream like last night’s, even though he knows that waking up to another cooling mess between his legs would sicken him.

“My son?” the priest prods.

Sam realizes that he has stopped talking. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in the semi-gloom of the confessional, thinking about the fact that he’s mostly okay with wanting to fuck his brother.

“Sorry, Father. I—this was a mistake.” He starts to rise only to be halted by the priest’s voice.

“If you were Called here, then it isn’t a mistake. Surely something prompted you to come this morning.”

Sam hesitates. The scent of whatever incense the priests use here is thick on the air. It smells as dismal as the rest of the church looks: pungent with a ruffling undercurrent—something uncomfortably reminiscent of sulfur.

“If you just need someone to talk to, I’m a good listener,” the priest continues. “We don’t necessarily have to make this a full confession, although I certainly promise to abide by the rules of confidentiality.”

Sam lets out a low, humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“The beginning is generally regarded as a good place.”

This time Sam’s laugh is louder and a little wild. He knows he sounds unhinged, but he can’t help himself. The beginning. Like he and Dean ever had a beginning. Sam can’t remember a time when Dean wasn’t swaggering through his life, leaving smudges on everything like a greedy, grubby-fingered child.

“We’d be here all day,” he says. After floundering for a point he can reasonably begin from, he continues, “My Dad died last year, and my brother—Dean—he, uh, took it kind of hard.”

“Dean’s older?”

“Four years,” Sam agrees. “He practically raised me. Dad was—he wasn’t around a lot.”

“I see,” the priest says, but he doesn’t. This frocked stranger can’t even begin to comprehend what it was like to grow up as a Winchester.

Even when Sam was still being lied to, in those early years, he felt the strangeness of his own existence in a hundred shitty motel rooms. He felt it in the way that the people in his kindergarten class spoke words that he didn’t understand: ‘party’, ‘home’, ‘mom.’ In the way that Dad would come back bruised and bleeding more often than not until the smell of disinfectant and copper were more familiar than the movie-theater scent of stale, buttered popcorn or the odor of the pepperoni and pineapple pizzas Dean preferred whenever they were in funds.

Sometimes he felt so far from the people around him that he thought he was living on the moon. Even Dad and Bobby were impossibly distant at times: foreboding, serious men who handled guns with the familiar ease Sam’s teacher at school wielded chalk.

Dean was the only one who was always in reach: swiping candy bars from gas stations when no one was looking and stuffing them in Sam’s pocket on the way to the car; wrestling Sam into the shower and then chasing him as he sprinted, naked and soapy and laughing, through their rented apartment; shaking him awake from fevered nightmares and then holding him awkwardly in the dark until the shivers went away.

And then later, after that wretched Christmas when Sam read Dad’s journal and uncovered the truth of his strange, drifting life … God, how could this priest have any idea what it was like waiting for his father and brother to come back from a hunt? Wondering where his brother would be bleeding from this time, or if Dean would even be alive.

Once, when Sam was fourteen, Dad returned Dean pale, blood-soaked and unconscious, dumping him on Sam with a grunted, ‘don’t let him get up by himself’ before disappearing back out the door. As if running around was going to be a problem when Dean wouldn’t even open his eyes no matter how loud Sam yelled or how hard he shook him.

As he sat by his brother’s bed waiting desperately to see if Dean was going to wake up at all, Sam knew for the first time that he couldn’t keep doing this. And when Dean finally stirred and the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Did we get it?’, he knew with a sinking hopelessness that Dean would never stop.

How the hell can anyone know what that felt like? Sam went through it, and sometimes _he_ doesn’t even know.

“He faked his own death,” Sam says with that bloodied, half-aware image of an eighteen-year-old Dean before his eyes. “He. There was a body, it w-was so badly burnt and I—I thought—they told me that—I thought he was gone.”

This is the part where the priest is supposed to be shocked and overcome with morbid curiosity, but instead the voice that floats to Sam through the slatted window is as infuriatingly calm as ever. “That must have hurt a great deal.”

There’s no hint of censure in the priest’s voice, but Sam is overcome with the irrational certainty that the man is judging Dean. And no stranger is going to judge his brother. They don’t have the right.

“He didn’t want to hurt me,” Sam says. “He’s … sick.”

So is Sam. God, what are they using for incense anyway? The scent of it is just getting stronger, clogging his throat and making him shift uncomfortably. His fingers slip along the ledge beneath the confessional window, shaking the dust loose and sending up a veritable cloud of motes into the shadowed box. The smell that’s been putting him so on edge jumps markedly and he sucks in a harsh, understanding breath.

There is no incense.

Sam scrambles to his feet before he thinks it through and has to bite back a curse once he realizes what he’s done. He’s unarmed except for the knife strapped to his calf: hasn’t bothered with holy water since Dean’s ‘death’, and knows that, even if he could get that far, there won’t be any in the fonts by the door. He might have gotten out of this if he’d played dumb, but there’s no chance of that now.

Sure enough, the priest—the demon—gives a low laugh and then says, “Aw, don’t be like that! See, if you run, I’m gonna have to kill you. And I really don’t want to do that. Not yet, anyway.”

Sam swallows with difficulty and, despite the fear pounding through him, doesn’t move. “What do you want?”

“Well, I was hoping for a confession.” The voice lifts, simpering, “I’m so lost, Father. I keep having these horrible, _naughty_ thoughts about my brother …”

Sam’s stomach lurches: part revulsion, part anger. “Shut up,” he growls.

The demon chuckles. “Don’t you want to tell me about it? Come on, Sammy: gimme all those wicked details.”

The fact that it knows his name doesn’t mean much: demons can read surface thoughts and the fact that it knows about Dean—knows _that_ specifically—means that it has been indulging in that particular parlor trick. No, it’s the _way_ the demon is speaking that tips him off. Something in the insinuating, familiar way it wraps its borrowed tongue around the words.

“Who are you?” he demands.

There’s a short pause and then, conversationally, the demon says, “I went to see you, you know. In Lawrence. You were sobbing like a little girl over Dean’s grave while he and Singer laughed their asses off.”

He knows that the part about Dean and Bobby isn’t true, but that doesn’t stop his breath from giving a short, pained hitch.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the demon continues, its voice dripping with false sincerity. “Did that hurt your feelings? I did try to tell you that he wasn’t any good for you.”

Blonde woman by the side of the road, small and pixyish and reminding him faintly of Jess. Sam killed that girl as surely as Dean believed he had: first knocking over the alter and then reading out the exorcism. He could have stopped that second time: he’d known that the girl would die, they both had. But when Dean made the decision, Sam didn’t hesitate and, unlike his brother, he never looked back.

“Meg,” he says, giving the demon the only name he has for it.

“Not anymore, thanks to you two,” the demon replies. “Right now, I’m in what you might call a transitional phase. A Jason here, a Selma there … Cleaning up Azazel’s mess.”

“Azazel,” Sam repeats blankly.

“Yellow eyes, had a hard on for pinning your nearest and dearest to the ceiling?” It pauses and then asks, “You ever wonder why he didn’t do Dean?”

Sam had. Even before he knew just how fucked up over his brother he really is, he knew that Dean is the most important person in his life: magnetic North to every compass he will ever navigate by.

“He only—he said Mom and Jess were in the way.”

“Mmm,” Meg murmurs in agreement. “Dean, though … Dean was leading you right where Azazel wanted you. He would have let you keep him, you know. Once he was all nice and broken in. Had a collar and leash all picked out for him.” Leering. Full of sensual insinuations. “Betcha wish you hadn’t shot old Azzie now, huh?”

It’s fucked up, but there _is_ a part of Sam that wishes he hadn’t been so quick on the draw. Because then Dean, no matter how restrained and damaged, would be here with him instead of who the hell knows where having God knows what done to him. There are shades of Hell, Sam understands, and he can’t decide which is worse: the limbo he’s stuck in now or the crimson-dusted dream of Azazel’s might-have-been.

“I wish we’d had enough bullets to shoot both of you,” Sam says finally. It’s a little too late to be convincing and Meg laughs.

“And here I thought we had a connection.” There’s a sound on the confessional wall between them: nails scraping over wood. “Do you ever dream of _me_ , Sam? Of Meg’s meat riding you hard and tight, just the way you like it? You wouldn’t have had to hold back. Could have fucked as long and hard as you wanted for once without worrying you were gonna hurt me. Not like poor Jess.”

Coming on top of everything it just said about Dean, Jess’ name hurts. “Shut up about Jess,” he snaps. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“You telling me you never made her cry?” Meg pushes. “Too hard, too fast, just too _much_ for her poor, defenseless flesh?”

The denial sticks in Sam’s throat. Once, that had been. Once and in the morning, when the alcoholic daze wore off and he saw the bruises on her hips—perfect imprints of his hands—he was sickened.

Jess wasn’t too phased. Shrugged it off with a soft smile and a ‘rough is fine every once in a while, baby. Just remember not all of us are built like you.’

Her words—her forgiveness—didn’t take the bitter edge off his guilt.

It occurs to Sam now that the reason he went on that drinking binge in the first place was that it was Dean’s birthday. Dean’s birthday and Christ, but he was missing his brother so goddamned much. He wanted to call, but he wasn’t even sure if Dean was alive. Didn’t want to take the risk of Dad answering Dean’s phone and telling him in a soft, broken voice that there was a ghost, or a black dog, or a ghoul, and so sorry Charlie but Dean didn’t make it.

So he waited for Dean to call _him_ , burying his fear in the beers and the shots he kept tossing back until he was drunk enough that it didn’t matter. Nothing fucking mattered. And Dean never called, and eventually Jess came and dragged him out of the bar and back to bed.

There’s a hazy wash of liquor-tinted memory connected to their coupling that night: memories Sam has never looked too closely at. All these years, he’s been telling himself that he avoided them was because he was ashamed of how heavy-handed he’d been, but he’s been lying.

Now, letting himself think of that night for the first time in almost four years, he remembers thinking of Dean as he pushed into Jess. Remembers thinking of his brother’s slow smile, and the splatter of freckles over the bridge of his nose, and the ginkgo constellation of his chest, and the broad strength of his back.

He remembers thinking that he was angry with Dean for not calling—for leaving him in this horrible wash of uncertainty—but he was lying to himself even as he fucked himself to a bitter, hostile conclusion. He wasn’t angry with Dean: he was disgusted with his own desires. Had to bite his lip bloody to keep Dean’s name from tumbling out of his mouth when he came.

“My, isn’t your mind an interesting place these days,” Meg comments.

Trembling a little with the force of the memory, Sam clenches his hands into useless fists.

“Poor, poor Jess,” Meg muses. “Barely cold in her grave and you were already working out how to tumble your brother into bed.”

“That’s a lie,” Sam rasps.

“Is it? You sure you weren’t being just a little bit needier … a little colder … so that big brother would trip over himself trying to make you happy?”

Oh God, was he? Sam doesn’t know anymore. Maybe he was. God knows there had been plenty of nights when he felt shuttered and lost, and sat hunched in on himself over the single beer he’d been nursing all evening. But then Dean would shrug off his latest conquest to sit by Sam’s side, shoulders bumping companionably as he talked about the old days, old hunts, old escapades. Close enough that Sam could see the corners of his eyes crinkle when he laughed. And a warm, happy little flush would chase the shadows in Sam’s chest away as he filled himself with Dean’s light.

But Sam didn’t … he didn’t _manipulate_ those moments, did he? Dean offered those of his own free will.

“Sure he did. Because of course Dean would rather be hanging out with his sour-faced baby brother than fucking some tight-bodied slut.” That laugh again, condescending and amused. “Talk about living in denial, Sammy.”

Meg’s words are closing on his stomach and chest like fists, but he can’t let her get to him like this. He has to keep his head if he’s going to get out of this and save Dean. Thankfully, forcing his own emotions aside isn’t hard: Sam’s been running numb for months.

“What the fuck do you want, Meg?” he asks when he’s as calm as he’s going to get.

“I told you, I’m cleaning up Azazel’s mess. Hunting down all of his mistakes and wiping the slate clean.”

“Mistakes,” Sam repeats, tasting the word.

“What, you didn’t think you were the only one, did you, Sammy?”

Sam thinks of Max’s desperate, tear-streaked face and shakes his head. “No.”

“It’s taken me a while—Daddy sure got around in his time—but I’m almost done. I saved you for last, Sam.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be. I’ve got a soft spot for you, kiddo. You’re just such a nice guy. Well, a nice guy who wants to fuck his big brother, but hey, who am I to throw stones?”

And suddenly, despite his numbness, Sam has had enough. He can’t take Meg lashing him with his feelings for Dean anymore. He doesn’t have a chance in hell, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from bursting his way out of the confessional in a bid for the main doors of the church.

He takes three strides and then the door on the priest’s side of the confessional explodes out in a shower of splinters. When Sam glances over his shoulder, he sees a man in a priest’s collar stroll out from the wreckage. The man has obviously been ridden hard: so thin he’s almost skeletal, face drawn, eyes too wide and beetle black.

There’s no warning. One moment Sam is sprinting for the door, the next a bolt of power is lifting him off his feet and tossing him into the pews. He hits his shoulder on the wooden back and lets out a pained shout as he crashes into an awkward heap, half-on and half-off the bench. His entire right arm has gone numb, but his shoulder is a screaming burn of agony and sweat—he’s pretty sure it’s sweat and not blood—rolls down the side of his face as he tries to right himself. If his shoulder isn’t actually broken or dislocated, he’s still going to be sporting one hell of a bruise tomorrow.

If he lives that long.

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Meg purrs with the priest’s voice. She grabs his shirt and drags him up so that he’s kneeling on the bench with one knee. “We were talking. Not too polite to run off like that.”

Sam knows it’s a futile gesture, but he claws at the priest’s hands anyway. One of the man’s sleeves tears beneath his fingers, flapping open to reveal a forearm lacerated with bloodied scratches. There are burn marks seared into the skin as well, fresh wounds layered on top of new in a roadmap of self-inflicted pain.

Did the priest do that himself in some small moment of lucidity, trying to burn the dark thing inside of himself out? Or are those marks Meg’s doing? But even at a glance, Sam can tell that some of those marks are well over a year old, and he knows first-hand that this particular demon was still coasting along in Meg’s body when they were inflicted.

It’s a puzzle he doesn’t have time to solve while he dangles in Meg’s grip, but the answer falls into his lap when the priest’s face almost seems to bulge. Sam is reminded absurdly of the Bugs Bunny cartoons he watched when he was a kid: the bulge that ripples through the man’s flesh is strongly reminiscent of Bugs’ tunnels.

It isn’t Bugs’ voice that booms out at him, but it isn’t the one Meg has been using either. This voice is deeper, and it carries none of Meg’s affected lilt. “So this is Samuel Winchester. Gotta say, I’m a little disappointed.”

What the fuck?

The priest’s head ticks to one side with such violence that Sam hears his neck snap, and when he speaks again, it’s with a third voice: soft and lisping. “Oh, let’s keep him for a while. So much lovely flesh to paint with pretty colors.”

Spittle flies from the man’s lips as his head shakes so rapidly that his face is nothing more than a blur. When he stills again, his mouth is set in an angry glower. “He’s _mine_.”

It’s Meg again. Sam isn’t sure how he knows, but he does.

“Jesus, how many of you are in there?” he breathes.

Meg’s curls the priest’s lips into an amused smile. “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

It isn’t one voice that speaks. It isn’t even a dozen. It sounds like hundreds, male and female and sexless all blending together in a mind-numbing roar. Sam can’t comprehend how the priest’s body isn’t splitting apart with that many demons crammed into it.

“It’s a little crowded in here.” Meg’s back at the controls, dragging him out from the pews and into the center aisle. “But that’s okay. I’m ready for a change of venue.”

She tosses him onto the stone floor and then, before he can do more than scramble onto his hands and knees, latches onto his hair and jerks him up so that he’s kneeling with his back stretched at an agonizing angle. He tries to reach over his head to strike at her and then gives up with a sharp exhale when his right shoulder screams in protest.

“Gonna pay Dean a little visit, Sammy,” Meg whispers in his ear. “Just you and me. You think he’ll figure out that you’re not the one at the controls when I’m fucking him into the ground?”

Sam’s entire body rebels at the threat, but his mind latches onto the tiny kernel of hope she just offered him. “You know where he is,” he says.

“Of course I know. We all do.” Meg chuckles as she edges around to his side, still keeping a tight grip on his hair. “Oh, it’s too rich. The great Dean Winchester brought low …”

“Where is he?” Sam demands. “Goddamn it, Meg, tell me where he is!”

“I’ll do you one better, Sam: I’ll take you there. If you’re a good boy, I may even let you out long enough to get a few thrusts of your own in. Now open up.” Meg releases his hair and then, lightning fast, grips his chin and starts forcing his mouth open.

 _No,_ Sam thinks desperately. He isn’t thinking of himself but of Dean. Of what Meg will do to Dean with his body. He won’t let her take him. He _can’t_. Clenching his jaw, he resists the press of the priest’s fingers.

“Come on, Sammy: smile pretty for me,” Meg purrs, pushing harder.

His jaw slips open an inch before he can stop it and he sucks in a panicked breath.

“Gonna have so much fun, the three of us. Just like old times. Well, except this time Dean’s gonna get fucked as well as bled, but I really think it’s time to take this relationship to the next level.”

Sam’s mouth slips open further and he knows that he can’t stop this. Futile rage and despair shudder through his body and he opens up on his own to shout, “Go to hell!”

Something deep in his head twists and his vision is overcome with a white wash of pain. When he can see again, Meg is backing away and something warm and wet is dripping from his nose. Blood. Sam presses the back of his weakened right hand against his nose to stem the flow and watches as the priest’s skin seems to ripple and swell.

“No,” Meg whispers through his mouth, and then the priest’s head falls back and his jaw gapes. His throat undulates as smoke pours past his lips, blacker than night and twice as dense. The demons scream with their thousand voices as they’re expelled, filling the church with echoes of furious madness. Multi-colored eyes peer out at him hatefully from the swirling darkness: mostly black, but he catches some glints of gold and red and once a flash of mottled purple.

The ceiling of the church is all but obscured by the massive cloud now, but demons continue to stream from the priest’s mouth. There’s a low rumbling that seems to shake the building’s very foundations and then the still growing cloud punches through one of the stained glass windows with a musical tinkle of shattering glass that’s at odds with the demons’ howling. As the demons begin to funnel out through the opening, a gale sweeps through the nave, ruffling Sam’s hair and catching at his clothes.

It seems to go on forever—one long vomitous expulsion of darkness that Sam can’t quite wrap his head around—and then, finally, the priest’s mouth closes and his body collapses to the stone floor. As the last of the demons stream out through the window, Sam half crawls, half stumbles across the floor to the priest’s side.

“Hey,” he says, grabbing the man’s shoulder.

The priest gives a short, pained cry and vomits onto the stones. It’s mostly blood—some fresh, but mingled with clotted, almost black clumps as well—and Sam doesn’t know if it’s because of whatever he just did or if the demons played with their ‘meatsuit’ too hard. Carefully, he rolls the man over and then winces when he sees his face.

Blood drips from his lips and stains his teeth red. More of the liquid—thick and already congealing—gushes from his nose, ears, and eyes and slicks his skin. He reaches for Sam blindly—can’t see past the blood—and finds Sam’s shirt with one, shaking hand.

“I thought they were angels,” the priest chokes out wetly, and then goes still.

Sam already knows he won’t find one, but he takes a moment to feel for a pulse anyway. Mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do. When he’s assured himself that the priest is, in fact, dead, he lays the man’s body down on the floor and sits back. Runs his left hand through his hair without thinking about it and smears himself with the dead man’s blood.

Jesus, what just happened? If Sam didn’t know better, then he’d say that he just exorcised the demons by telling them to get out. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? He can’t do shit like that: he’s only ever had dreams and visions, and even those have deserted him since the yellow-eyed demon—Azazel—died.

 _No, that’s not true,_ he reminds himself. _There was something else. Once._

Once, when Dean was in danger. When he’d needed to dig deep inside of himself for a miracle in order to save his brother’s life. The parallels of the situations don’t escape him.

Gradually, he becomes aware of a growing clamor outside. Exorcisms aren’t quiet affairs at the best of times, and this particular one was a little too loud to be ignored. Sam’s pretty sure that the only reason the concerned citizenry gathering at the front doors haven’t burst inside yet is that they’re familiar with this place. They know it the way a man knows his rotting tooth. Won’t poke it with his tongue until he’s absolutely forced to.

But it’s only a matter of time before a cop drives by—sooner rather than later in a neighborhood like this. No cop worth his badge would ignore the murmuring, fearful crowd of people on the church steps. When they come, hands on holsters and hearts pounding with the sick fear this defiled place has inspired for God only knows how long, Sam can’t afford to be found sitting next to the priest’s bloodied, reeking body. Not when Dean’s life is at stake.

When he finally gets himself moving, though, he doesn’t head for the exit. Instead, he jogs clumsily for the small door to the right of the pulpit. There’s a narrow hallway on the other side, leading down a flight of stairs and ending in a closed wooden door with a gold nameplate _(Father Matthews)_ on the outside. If the door is locked, Sam is fucked because he doesn’t have time to pick it and he didn’t bother checking the priest—Matthews, apparently—for keys.

The latch turns easily under his hand, and he steps into a nightmare. The police are going to have a field day trying to unravel this mess. There are going to be inquiries, and the church is going to be scrambling to get a cover up in place as face as they can say ‘no comment’.

Instead of the religious icons and inspirational posters Sam would expect to see lining the walls of a priest’s office, the stone here is covered with knives and whips. Lovingly oiled scourges and cuffs and axes and a serrated saw and something that looks like a branding iron. There’s blood on most of them, and the wall by the priest’s desk is devoted to photographs: trophies of the tortures that the demons inhabiting the priest have inflicted on his parish.

They’ve been busy.

Sam doesn’t let himself examine the photographs very closely: there’s too much red on that wall for him to feel any curiosity on the subject. Instead, he moves to the desk and shoves a few loose papers _(fragments of a sermon on Hellfire and Damnation)_ onto the floor. The old, leather bound journal the papers were hiding doesn’t look like anything special, but he knows as soon as his fingers brush its black cover that he has found what he was looking for.

Tucking the book underneath his arm, Sam is out one of the side doors well before the first horrified scream echoes out through the shattered remnants of the stained glass window.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The page that Sam wants is marked with a metal bookmark reading, _Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace_. It’s a summoning ritual. Not some crackerjack box imitation cooked up by a wannabe devil worshiper, but an ancient, powerful mesh of word and deed. The header at the top, written in the same cramped, spidery hand as the rest of it, reads, _To Summone The Mynisterf Of Hif Wille On Earthe_.

Looking at the header, Sam understands the priest’s final, broken words. The book must have fallen into the man’s hands—was perhaps placed there—and the priest naturally assumed that the ‘him’ in question was God. He thought that he found a way to summon angels.

Sam runs his fingertips over the words and can see the priest in his mind. Younger then, and innocent: with his face beaming and his hair a uniform chestnut. A little plump around the midsection from too many hours spent studying and writing sermons. He can see Matthews setting up the summoning circle and performing the ritual with trembling, ecstatic hands. Sees the demons come in a whirlwind of black and cram themselves into his body. Sees the horrified realization in his eyes just before the black overtakes them.

But how the hell did he manage to get so many demons inside of him?

Sam searches for an answer in the ritual and finds it almost at once. The endings of some of the words have been scribbled out, and new ones written in by another, neater hand. Singular to plural.

After all, why summon one angel when you can summon an entire flock?

“You stupid bastard,” Sam whispers, but there’s no real scorn in him. Only weariness and a slow throb of pity.

He sits over the book for a long time, reading through the ritual over and over again and trying to figure out why he took it. Why this page in particular is drawing him in like a beacon: like Dean’s wide, taunting smile. When it hits him, his breath catches at the very audacity of the idea.

 _‘Of course I know. We all do,’_ Meg said. When she thought she had Sam cornered, and the information could do nothing but hurt.

But Sam is here, and still his own man, and now he knows that he has the means to compel them to tell him exactly where Dean is, if he can only summon up the courage.

And a demon.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He takes every precaution.

A call to Pastor Jim’s successor gets him the name of a local priest who knows the old consecration rituals well enough to sanctify all of Sam’s tiny motel room but a small, two meter wide circle that Sam marks off. The man doesn’t ask questions outright, but his eyes are more than a little curious while he works. On his way out, he pauses in the doorway and says, “I don’t know exactly what you’re planning, son, but there are other ways.”

Sam returns his gaze. Steady. Calm again now that he’s doing what needs to be done. “No,” he says, “There really aren’t.”

The priest pales and drops his eyes. “Go with God, then,” he intones, and sketches a shaky cross in Sam’s direction before letting himself out.

Later that afternoon, when Sam is out picking up the vervain, incense and black candles he needs for the ritual, his cell rings. He thumbs it out, glances down at the caller id, and considers ignoring it. Then again, she’s just going to keep calling until he picks up.

He flips open the phone and says without preamble, “I know what I’m doing.”

Missouri’s voice comes back, angry and frightened, with: “You actually believe that and you’re a damn fool, boy. Now, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but—”

“I’m getting Dean back,” Sam interrupts. “He’s mine.” Although his voice doesn’t shake, the calm shield shudders alarmingly.

Missouri sucks a breath in as though she caught a better glimpse of the wild need raging just out of sight than Sam did. “Honey, these things you’re dealing with are no good,” she tries more softly. “Not just the demons, but the darkness inside of yourself. It can consume you, if you aren’t careful.”

Sam nods, thinking of Dean’s eyes; of his brother’s hands tapping out the drum line of Zeppelin’s _Black Dog_ as they speed down the highway at eighty miles an hour; of the comfortable, warm smell of Impala and Dean and the open road.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says pleasantly, and then hangs up.

When his phone starts ringing again, he turns it over, pulls out the battery, and goes about his business.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There’s no dread as he finally stands in his darkened motel room chanting the words from the dead priest’s book. Only a thrum of anticipation electrifying his skin. Only Dean’s face before his eyes, and his own will gathered to shove behind the one question he has for whatever son of a bitch shows up in the summoning circle.

 _Where the fuck is my brother?_

He slits the skin of his palm with a knife Dean gave him for his tenth birthday and lets the blood dribble onto the burning vervain. There’s a flash of light and smoke and then silence.

Sam waits.

He’s still waiting when Bobby breaks down the door three hours later, sweating and frantic and swearing up a storm. Bobby comes to a halt just inside the room, his eyes darting from the candles to the circle to Sam himself, kneeling there with blood caked on his palm and dull, defeated eyes.

“They won’t come,” Sam says. “I did everything right, I know I did. Why didn’t they come?”

Bobby flicks on the overhead light and then edges cautiously forward to snuff out the candles. The room blurs and Sam is crying, clutching the book to his chest and weeping hopelessly. It feels like losing Dean all over again.

“Why didn’t they come, Bobby?” he repeats as Bobby hauls him to his feet and leads him over to the bathroom.

“I don’t know, but you’re lucky as hell they didn’t. Now hold still and let me get this clean.” He shoves Sam’s hand under the faucet: lets the water carry some of the blood away.

Sam watches it swirl down the drain, reddened by the coin he paid for the demon’s passage. _Lucky,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t feel lucky. He feels damned.

In his numbed mind he hears Meg’s laughing, malicious voice. _‘You didn’t really think we were just going to hand Dean over to you, did you?’_ Amused, cruel laughter. _‘Oh, Sammy, how stupid do you think we are?’_


	7. Truths Among Thieves

Bobby stays with Sam for a week, and by the end it seems like they’re having shouting matches every other hour. Sam doesn’t remember arguing this badly with his father: not even during those last volatile months before he left for Stanford. It’s funny because he doesn’t actually feel angry. He _is_ done with numbness—his encounter with the demons and his subsequent failure to summon them back has left him with a constant, deep-seated ache in his chest that makes breathing painful—but that doesn’t mean he’s any closer to understanding why he feels so driven to fight with Bobby.

It’s a relief to both of them when Bobby finally throws his hands up in the air, announcing that he’s taking the book with him and telling Sam not to ‘try any more dumb ass shit’. He doesn’t understand that Sam was never in danger in the first place, and Sam sure as hell isn’t going to tell him. He knows full well what Bobby would say about any power that gives someone the ability to command demons.

The prospect of being alone again soothes Sam slightly, and as he watches Bobby pack, he feels calm enough to ask the question that’s been running through his mind on again and off again over the past few weeks. He closes the laptop and then leans forward a little over the table.

“Bobby?”

Bobby grunts an acknowledgement from his position by the queen bed he’s been using. He doesn’t look up, though, and he doesn’t pause from shoving the last of his shirts into the open rucksack on the bedspread.

Sam looks between the beds—two queens not because Bobby is here, but because no matter how strained his finances have been he can’t bring himself to ask for a single—and then asks, “Why did you tell me?”

Now Bobby stops what he’s doing to glance over his shoulder. His brow is furled with cautious confusion. “Tell you what?”

“That Dean wasn’t dead,” Sam clarifies, leaning forward on the table where he’s sitting. “I’m not doing anything you couldn’t have done on your own.”

Bobby’s mouth thins with pain and then smoothes out again. Dropping his eyes, he turns away and shoves the priest’s book into the rucksack on top of his clothing. The zipper won’t go easily with the bag this full, and he struggles with it, muttering things that are probably swears under his breath.

“Bobby?” Sam prods after a few seconds.

When it comes, Bobby’s answer is so soft that he has to strain to hear it. “I told you because Dean deserved to have someone looking for him for his own sake. And I didn’t—I didn’t trust myself to do that for him.”

Sam wants to hate Bobby for that admission, but he can’t. He can’t because Bobby has turned to face him again and there are tears running down the man’s face. His hands tremble on the straps of his rucksack.

“It isn’t because I don’t love him, Sam. I love both you boys like you were my own sons. But I—I’m weak.” His voice hitches in something horribly like a sob, and when he continues his voice is slow. Reluctant.

“There’s a part of me sometimes that doesn’t want to find him because then I wouldn’t have to end him. It isn’t a big part, but it’s there, and I wanted—I wanted someone else looking for him. I wanted someone looking who wouldn’t hold back anything, no matter what the consequence.”

Finished, he stands there looking at Sam with damned, dark eyes. He’s waiting for something—for some kind of absolution or forgiveness, maybe—but Sam has nothing to offer. After a minute, Bobby seems to realize that and, hauling in a deep breath, nods.

“You find your brother. But I can’t handle losing the both of you together, so you keep yourself safe. No more demons.”

“We’ve been over this,” Sam says. His voice sounds strange in his own ears: too cold and harsh to belong to the man he thought he was. The man he’s rapidly leaving behind.

Bobby tugs his cap lower over his face, shoulders slumping. “Yeah, I guess we have. You’ll call me if you need anything?”

It’s a promise Sam can’t make so he just sits there with his mouth shut, and after a few moments Bobby gets the message.

“Take care of yourself, Sam,” he offers clumsily, and then he’s gone.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Now that Sam is alone again, it’s easy to fall back into his old patterns. The ache in his chest doesn’t lessen, but he starts to get used to it. Sometimes he sits on the subway and thinks about Dean—a tilt of his head; the way he sometimes hunched over his food like he was afraid Sam was going to steal it from him; those slow, genuine smiles Sam saw all too rarely. He lets the memories prod the sore place inside him like an amputee victim relishing the phantom ache of his missing limb, immersing himself in the only sensation left to him.

He wonders when it’s finally going to become too much and push him over the edge. When that band connecting him to Dean is finally going to snap and break him open beyond repair.

And then, almost a month after Sam’s disastrous attempt to conjure himself an answer, his phone rings while he’s picking listlessly at the turkey club he ordered for lunch. The caller id tells him that it’s Bobby. He considers letting it flip over to voicemail and then picks up instead because he’s feeling restless. He’s been spoiling for another fight for the last week or so, wanting to take his mind off of the fact that Dean has been missing for a little over six months now: that it’s been over a year since he last saw his brother alive.

“What,” he snaps.

Either Bobby doesn’t notice the tone of his voice or he thinks Sam is entitled to a little sharpness because his response is level and smooth. “I’ve got a name for you, Sam. I can’t believe I didn’t think of her sooner, but I really think she might be able to help us find Dean.”

“What?” Sam says again. It’s a whisper. A prayer.

Bobby gives him a name and a warning: “She might be able to help, but you be careful with her. She’s not in the same business we are: she’s a mercenary. Keep your guard up.”

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Sam says, tossing some money down on the diner counter and pulling on his jacket. “Just tell me where I can find her.”

“Well, that’s the best part. She lives in Queens.”

Sam is already on his way to the bus station when he hangs up with Bobby. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to pay this mercenary’s fees with his nonexistent funds, but this is the first concrete chance he’s been offered and he has to at least try.

Bela. Bela Talbot.

The name sounds like salvation.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I wondered how long it would take you to show up.”

It’s the first thing she says to him, beautiful and sprawled on a white sofa that probably cost more than all of Sam’s possessions combined. Her place looks like crap from the outside: a six story brick building with the front door hanging askew and the lower windows boarded up. The first three floors are empty; the last three aren’t really separate floors at all but one big loft.

Even in the midst of his anxiety, Sam finds it a little mind-boggling. It must have cost a small fortune to set this up: buying a building and renovating the top floors. Doing it quietly enough that she wouldn’t have to deal with petty thieves trying to rip her off all the time.

“You knew I was coming?” Sam asks, edging inside cautiously. The loft isn’t cramped by any means, but he’s never been more aware of his size and occasional bouts of clumsiness. Keeps thinking of the way that the employees of the curio-shops Jess liked to poke through looked at him with slight, worried frowns whenever he stepped through the door.

Bela offers him an amused smile that tells him she knows what he’s thinking and says, “Shut the door before you let the cat out.”

Sam does and then stands there awkwardly, looking at all of the art she has hanging on her walls, and the statues, and the display cases of mystical crap that all has to be worth a fortune, and not a small one either. He isn’t worried about breaking something anymore, too overcome with the devastating realization that he isn’t anywhere close to affording her. Absurdly, he finds himself thinking of Lucy and Charlie Brown and that damned football.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Bela asks. She rises and pads into the kitchen and Sam follows, chest twisting with the urge to throw himself at her feet and beg—offer anything, _everything_ , if she’ll just help him get his brother back. Everything is bright and clean in Bela’s kitchen, the counters immaculate and the cat prowling along them as impeccably groomed as its mistress.

Sam stands next to the island with his hands shoved into his pockets like a grubby-fingered kid and is too bewildered—too frantic—to do anything but blurt, “I need your help.”

Bela spares him a glance, one eyebrow arched, as she sets two glasses on the counter. “Of course you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“Yes, I.” Sam makes himself stop, takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and then says, “Bobby Singer gave me your name. He said you might be able to help me find my brother, but I don’t know if I can afford—”

“Whisky on the rocks,” she interrupts, handing him one of the glasses. He takes it with the same ingrained response on which people who hand out flyers on street corners rely and she tips her own glass against his with a musical clink. “To profitable ventures. Cheers.”

Sam can’t find it in him to return the sentiment, but he doesn’t want to annoy her so he forces a mouthful of the whisky down. It stings all the way.

“Look, my brother’s missing,” he says as soon as his mouth is free. “He was taken from—”

“Powder, yes I know.” She gives the cat a single, absent pet and then heads back into her living room while sipping on her drink.

“Did Bobby call you?” Sam asks, confused. Bobby hadn’t mentioned anything like that, but he can’t figure out how else she would know so much about Dean’s kidnapping.

“No,” Bela says, and then lets out a short sigh as she stops in the middle of the living room and turns around. “Look, you’re going to hear about this sooner or later, so let’s cut to the chase and make it sooner. I know where Dean was taken because I helped set up the removal.”

Sam hears his glass break on the floor before he knows he’s moved. He sprints across the room, not feeling clumsy at all at present, and collides with Bela, dashing her own glass out of her hand. It thuds onto the rug but doesn’t break as he shoves her backwards and down onto her expensive sofa. She goes, unresisting, and a moment later he has the muzzle of his gun pressed into the soft flesh underneath her chin.

Distantly, Sam is taken aback by how angry he is—even angrier than he was that day six months ago at Bobby’s—but he’s too overwhelmed by rage to think of much beyond the red pulse of Bela’s beautiful, calm face. Bitch.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” he snarls, and almost hopes she won’t be able to come up with one. Months of searching, and he finally has his hands on one of the fuckers who took his brother. Who lured him and drugged him and shoved him, unconscious and helpless, into the back of an unregistered SUV.

“Tad cliché, aren’t you?” Bela asks. Her voice is far too calm for Sam’s sanity and he shoves the gun harder into her skin until she winces. “All right, you’ve made your point. Look, I can help you get your brother back. Or aren’t you interested in that anymore?”

Sam’s finger strains at the trigger—he wants to pull it, wants to hurt this bitch who hurt his brother—and then he forces himself to shift back. His muscles are trembling, and he’s so angry that it’s making him nauseous. “Where is he?”

Bela puts one hand on his chest, edging him back enough so that she can sit up. “I’m not precisely certain,” she says, adjusting her hair. Then, before he can shove her back down, she adds, “But I can find out.”

“Do that,” Sam says. “Now.”

“My sources are a tad shy. We have to wait until dark to contact them. While we wait, we can talk fees.” She offers him a broad smile.

“You sold my brother out and now you want to charge me to get him back?” Sam demands incredulously.

Bela rolls her shoulders in a shrug. “I’m a businesswoman, Sam. I can’t do something for nothing.”

“How much did you charge them?”

“It was a ‘him’, actually, and three hundred thousand dollars.”

It’s more than Megan Capel was paid, and it still isn’t anywhere near enough. Sam’s rage crests to a painful, blinding flare of white—needs some form of release—and he reaches out and grabs a glass statue sitting on Bela’s coffee table. Tosses it across the room where it shatters on the floor. He stares at the shards, breathless, and sees his brother’s staggering, drugged form mirrored in each one.

“If it would make you feel better, you can smash everything in here,” Bela tells him.

Laughing hoarsely, Sam buries his face in his hands.

Bela is silent for a few minutes, giving him time to try to collect himself, and then she says, “About a year ago, I was approached by a client who wanted to make an acquisition.”

“Name,” Sam demands, lifting his head again. The shards of Bela’s statue glitter at him, empty.

“Vincent Camargo, not that it would mean anything to you. You don’t exactly move in the same circles.” It isn’t said with any particular condescension: just a statement of fact. “Do you mind if I get myself another drink?”

“Knock yourself out,” Sam mutters, adjusting his grip on the gun. If she tries to bolt for the door, he’ll shoot her in the leg, but he doesn’t think she will. She knew he was coming, after all. She could have run before he got here. She could have refused to buzz him in. She could have shot him as he walked through the door.

He’s going to have to trust that she’s at least willing to talk to him: give him some answers. Of course, this ‘Vincent’ could be on his way here right now to take care of Sam himself, but that’s a risk Sam is going to have to take. He needs Bela’s help, as distasteful as that idea is, and they both know it.

Bela rises smoothly, and as she heads back toward the kitchen she continues, “Vincent told me that the target was very dangerous and not to be harmed, and I did some research and worked out several scenarios for him. He chose the one he thought would have the best chance at succeeding, paid me for my time, and here you are.”

She falls silent and Sam watches as she pours herself a new glass of whiskey. He looks at the graceful line of her neck, and the sweep of her hair. He’s never hit a woman, but he’s really fucking tempted to hit this one. One bruise for every day Dean has been missing. It wouldn’t be justice, but it would at least be a start.

“You can have details if you want them,” Bela adds as she screws the cap back on the bottle.

“No,” Sam rasps, and then clears his throat and repeats, more loudly, “No.” He saw what happened to Dean: he doesn’t need anything more specific. It won’t help get Dean back, and it’s only going to unbalance him further. He’s having enough trouble keeping his temper already.

Bela nods and then stands there sipping her drink. Her glittering eyes watch him over the top of the glass. Calculating. Cautious.

Letting him know that it’s his move.

Sam knows what he has to ask. What he both longs to know and yet dreads to uncover. His eyes drift back to the glass littering the floor and he makes himself say it.

“What did he want Dean for? What’s he been doing to my brother?”

“I don’t ask that kind of question,” Bela answers. “It’s bad for business.”

Of course it is.

But Sam feels a tiny pulse of relief all the same. For a little while longer, he doesn’t have to deal with the knowledge of just how Dean is being tortured, or used, or broken. He’ll be seeing the damage soon enough, now that he’s found Bela. Whether she wants to help him or not.

He tightens his grip on the gun.

“I’m sorry,” Bela says into the silence.

Sam’s jaw clenches and he looks up to find that she’s moved a little closer and is standing in the no-man’s land between the kitchen and the living room. She’s looking at him with a sincere, genuine expression of pity and regret, and she doesn’t get to look like that. Not after what she’s done.

“You’re _sorry_?” he repeats, pushing himself up to his feet and advancing on her. “Twenty two people _died_ so that you could lure Dean here—”

“I didn’t have a hand in that,” Bela protests, but Sam keeps right on going, backing her up against the island and looming over her.

“—and you sold my brother. You fucking _sold_ him! Like some kind of animal.”

He doesn’t touch her. If he touches her, he’s going to hit her, and if he hits her, he’s going to end up using the gun he’s still holding in his right hand. He needs her alive. He needs her help to find Dean. That knowledge is enough—barely—to keep him in line, but it isn’t enough to stop the furious, vengeful tremors from wracking his muscles.

“You’re right, I did,” Bela agrees, looking up at him with liquid, honest eyes. “And I can’t undo that. But I can try to make amends.”

She sounds so sincere, and Sam wants to believe her—God, does he want to—but this show of repentance is almost too genuine. Like a play put on for his benefit.

Or maybe he’s just finding it difficult trusting the person who’s responsible for his brother’s kidnapping.

“Why should I believe you even give a shit?” Sam demands. “You didn’t have a problem selling him six months ago.”

“Put the gun away and I’ll tell you.”

Sam hesitates. He doesn’t know her. Doesn’t—can’t—trust her.

Bela rolls her eyes, moves suddenly, and is holding a small revolver— _where the fuck did she get that?_ —against his chest. She offers him a tight smile as he blinks down at her.

“Now, I’ve been very cooperative, Sam, and I understand that you’re worried about your brother, but I don’t appreciate being held at gunpoint in my own home.”

It takes all of Sam’s willpower but he manages to put the safety on and tuck his gun away at the small of his back.

“Good boy,” Bela murmurs, offering him a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. She lays her own gun on the counter and then slips away and heads over to the bookcase sitting kitty-corner in the living room. Pausing in front of it, she trails one hand along worn spines that belong to antique books that look just as expensive as everything else she owns.

“I’ll help you get your brother back for the Colt,” she announces.

“The Colt?” Sam repeats stupidly. He’s have difficulty keeping up with the conversation, too preoccupied with keeping the urge to tie Bela down and bleed her for what she did to Dean under lock and key. God, he almost wishes she wasn’t cooperating.

“ _Non timebo mala?_ ” Bela prompts. “Kills demons?”

“But it’s useless: there aren’t any bullets left.”

Bela tosses a pitying look over her shoulder. “You haven’t ever bargained with someone before, have you?” she says, and then before he can respond, adds, “Are you willing to trade the Colt for your brother or aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Sam says. “You can have it. It just, uh, seems a little too good to be true.”

“Well, the gun is just part of my payment. The other half is freeing your brother.” When she turns around, she’s holding a book in her hands. It’s bound in dark red leather and there’s an arrow on the front cover. No, not an arrow: a rune. Teiwaz.

Sam’s breath catches. “That’s—”

“Tyr’s Bible, yes. I acquired it two months ago.” She soothes her hands over the cover lovingly.

“I thought it didn’t exist. I thought it was just a legend.” If he had even suspected otherwise, he would have torn the world apart looking for it.

According to legend, the book that Bela is holding was written by the god Tyr himself. It describes his battle with the wolf Fenrir, and the battle’s aftermath: describes the first union of man and animal spirit. If there’s a cure _anywhere_ —some way to reverse the soul bleed—then it’s there.

Dean’s salvation in Bela’s well-manicured hands.

Sam moves forward, reaching, and Bela immediately holds the book over her head. As if _that’s_ going to stop him from taking it. As if anything but death is going to stand between him and that book.

“It’s warded,” she says quickly. “If anyone but me touches it, it’ll be no more than a pile of ash.”

That stops him.

“There are quite a few interesting things in here,” she continues when she sees that he isn’t going to come any closer. “If I’d known what it meant that the wolf chose Dean, I never would have taken the job. Not for any amount of money. I don’t traffic in human souls.”

She’s telling the truth about refusing the job: Sam can feel it in his bones. But she’s lying about _why_.

 _Does it matter?_ he asks himself, staring at the book. The answer— _of course it fucking matters_ —comes back instantly.

Bela’s after something here, and it isn’t absolution. She lied to him about knowing what Vincent wanted Dean for, and she’s lying now about why she’s willing to help Sam get him back for nothing more than a gun that no longer works. She’s dangerous, and can’t be trusted.

But she’s all he has.

Sam licks his lips and asks, “Is there a cure in there? Some kind of reversal ritual?”

Bela regards him blankly for a moment and then her lips twitch up in a too-bright smile. “Why, would you like to buy it?”

“I … how much?”

Bela stares into his eyes, and Sam knows she can see the desperation there. His need. Then she turns and slides the book back into its proper place on the shelf.

“You can’t afford it,” she tells him. “But I might be willing to sell it to your brother, once he’s his own man again.”

Sam doesn’t know what Dean could possibly offer Bela that he can’t: has a feeling that he wouldn’t like the answer if he did. But it’s a chance.

“So, are you going to let me help you?”

Sam meets her eyes and admits, “I don’t have a choice.” The words grit against his throat like sand.

“No, you don’t.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In the end, Bela’s mysterious ‘sources’ are anticlimactic. She picks up a black ball, shuts her eyes, and shakes it. Then she turns it over, squints down through a window in the bottom, and says, “Las Vegas. Why am I not surprised.”

“Your ‘source’ is a magic eight ball?” Sam demands.

“No, my sources are the spirits. The magic eight ball is just a conduit.” She tosses the ball onto her couch and flops down beside it. “Be a dear and make us some reservations, will you? First class? There’s a boy.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s tomorrow morning and they’re 37,000 feet up and well on their way before Lewis Ferron’s bloodied, pain-wracked face suddenly fills Sam’s mind. He glances over at Bela, who is half-dozing in the seat next to him, and asks, “How come you could find him?”

She blinks heavy lidded eyes at him and then arches one eyebrow. “Sorry, I don’t quite follow.”

Frowning now, with his muscles tight and thrumming with Bobby’s warning, Sam presses, “The other psychics I tried couldn’t find him.”

Understanding sparks in Bela’s eyes and she shrugs and looks back out the window. “I expect that Vincent has him warded against scrying. But I wasn’t looking for Dean: I was looking for Vincent.”

“How the hell is that supposed to help?” Sam demands. “You can’t know they’re in the same place.”

“Wherever Vincent is, Dean will be,” Bela announces. “Trust me, Sam.”

Sam’s stomach gives a roll at the lazy assurance in her voice, leaving him with the illusion that the plane just hit some turbulence. Trust her, she says. The woman who sold his brother to Vincent without a moment’s hesitation. The woman who’s almost certainly lying to him, who knows Vincent well enough to know that he’ll be with Dean.

 _What am I doing?_ he thinks, staring at her profile. _What in God’s name am I doing with her?_

But he knows what he’s doing: saving Dean the only way available to him. He’s just going to have to be careful. Keep his guard up and both eyes on Bela.

 _I’m coming, Dean. Just hang on, man._

Sam leans back against his seat and stares up at the ceiling while the plane speeds on, carrying him to Vegas on swift, silver wings.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They touch down after a bumpy descent just a few minutes before noon. Sam is impatient after months of waiting, can feel Dean’s nearness as a steady pressure on his skin, but Bela brings them first to the Bellagio, where she throws some money and some names around and books them a suite.

Sam tries to insist on having another bed brought up—he wants the assurance that there’s going to be a third person with them soon to use it—but Bela gives him an overly cheerful look and says, “You don’t really think we’re going to be hanging around here once we meet up with your friend, do you?”

It’s a measure of how stressed Sam is that he’s halfway to correcting her— _my Dean, my brother, when we rescue him_ —before belatedly realizing that, although the desk clerk seems to be busy entering information into the computer, he’s undoubtedly listening to their conversation. Sam forces an ‘aw, shucks’ smile on his face. It feels plastic and fake, but Bela’s eyes brighten encouragingly and she turns back to the clerk.

“So,” she says. “I think the Presidential Suite will do just fine as is.”

Sam’s a little taken aback by the sheer size of the suite. It’s bigger than Bobby’s house, it seems, with a foyer and a living room and a dining room with a full bar set up at one end. An honest to God _fountain_ in the foyer. Solarium with an adjoining indoor garden. Across from the L-shaped bar is a long, official looking room that a tiny gold plaque on the wall helpfully labels the ‘Conference Room’.

“Base of operations,” Bela says, opening the Conference Room door and peering in. “I’ll let the maid service know it’s off limits. It would be helpful if you left your weapons in here when we’re out.”

It’s possibly a little ungrateful, considering that it’s Bela’s case he used to package his semi-automatics in compliance with airline regulations, but Sam tightens his grip on the metal handle. “Who said I was going anywhere unarmed?”

Regarding him calmly, Bela taps one nail against the plaque. “You don’t honestly think that a couple of guns are going to make any difference against these people, do you? If we’re going to get your brother out, then we’ll need brains, not brawn. I was under the impression that you were going to be an asset in that department.” She pauses, tilting her head. “Or was I wrong?”

Sam lets all of his mistrust and hate show on his face for a moment and Bela is startled into taking a single step back before she catches herself.

“They’re not for them,” he says.

Bela’s mouth firms. “I’m not the enemy here, Sam.”

Sam is surprised into a laugh. He doesn’t know if she thinks he’s naive enough to believe that or if she’s just hoping he’ll be blinded by a pair of pretty eyes and a body to match. As if anything she has to offer would ever come close to measuring up to Dean.

“You sold my brother to some rich fuck for three hundred thousand. You helped them drug him, and drag him off the street like an animal. I think I’ll decide who the enemy is.”

“I’m also the one who’s helping you get him back,” Bela points out.

Sam drops his duffle off his shoulder, leaving him unburdened except for the weapons case, and narrows his eyes. “And why is that, again?” he asks.

“I told you: I didn’t have all the information at the time. I’m trying to make up for a mistake.”

“Bad girl with a heart of gold wants to redeem herself, is that it?”

“Of course not,” Bela replies disdainfully. “I’m not a saint, and this isn’t some storybook tale. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a conscience, and I’d like to be able to sleep properly at night.”

She looks slightly angry, as if she doesn’t like having to admit to such a weakness. Sam wishes he could believe that the expression is genuine, but it feels too much like a new variation on an old theme. He’s only known Bela for a little more than twenty-four hours, and he’s already tired of pretending to believe her bullshit.

Setting his mouth in a hard line, he demands, “What did Vincent want my brother for?”

Bela’s eyes sharpen for a moment, and then her face eases back into its normal, carefree emptiness. “I told you, Sam. I don’t know. Now toss your things in your room. We’ve got some shopping to do before tonight.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They don’t go far: just a few blocks over to a gaudy stretch of the Strip that seems entirely devoted to high-end fashion. Sam spots a Dior, and an Armani’s. The women who are strolling down the street are wearing fur and diamonds and carrying tiny, jewel-collared dogs. The men are dressed in suits and impeccably groomed.

Sam is wearing an old pair of jeans, a flannel shirt and three days worth of stubble. He understands, in a vague way, that if he still cared about anything aside from getting Dean back that he’d be feeling a little out of his depth right now. As it is, he just glances at Bela and asks, “What are we doing here?”

“Getting you some proper attire,” Bela answers, taking Sam by the arm and leading him into a shop with a pink, flashing _Andre’s_ over the door.

A man with fuzz-short blond hair and a white suit appears in front of them before Sam can press Bela for a straight answer. The man adjusts his tie, which is as pink as the sign out front, and gives Sam a despairing look. “Oh, _honey_ ,” he says, sounding more than a little devastated.

Bela gives Sam a little shove forward. “This is Sam,” she announces. “Sam, this is Andre.”

Andre’s hands twitch forward and Sam starts to take a nervous step backwards, only to run into Bela.

“It’s all right, Sam,” she assures him with no small amount of amusement. “Andre’s the best.”

“I should hope so,” Andre sniffs. He reaches out again and starts unbuttoning Sam’s shirt. Sam slaps the man’s hands away. Utilizes the utmost restraint and doesn’t follow up with a right hook to his jaw.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he grounds out.

“Grouchy, aren’t you?” Andre says with an affected pout.

“Bela,” Sam growls over his shoulder.

“Just let him do his job, Sam,” Bela says.

Andre reaches forward again and Sam halts him with a frown. After a moment of consideration, he undoes his buttons on his own and shrugs out of his overshirt. Andre whistles low, tracing his eyes over Sam’s chest.

“Well, well. You’re certainly going to clean up nicely.”

Sam glances over his shoulder to glare at Bela again, but she’s drifted off to stroke a black, slinky number that probably costs more than the Impala. He considers leaving now that he isn’t being herded, but he’s reasonably sure that Bela didn’t bring him down here for her own amusement, so instead he clenches his jaw and stands still while Andre whips a strip of measuring tape around his shoulders, waist, and biceps. Finally, after a measured glance between Sam’s hostile face and his crotch, Andre takes a step back and asks several embarrassing questions about length and ‘which way do we normally hang, gorgeous?’

Sam stutters out answers and then lets himself be led to a fitting room that’s larger than some of the motel rooms he and Dean have stayed in. Andre leaves him alone for a few minutes and then reappears with a pile of pants and jackets in his arms. As he hangs them up on the wall, he’s followed in by two other men with similar burdens. Then, with a final wink and an admonition to ‘call if you need anything, hon,’ all three men disappear and shut the door behind them.

“How are you doing, Sam?” Bela calls somewhere between the fourth and fifth suit.

“Fine,” Sam answers shortly, and then pulls off the jacket and tosses it across the room.

He doesn’t know how Andre expects him to be able to move in those things. They’re practically plastered to his skin. Make him feel twitchy and uncomfortable. Exposed. After trying on three more suits, he finds a pair of pants that actually fit and reaches for the shirt and jacket with a certain amount of relief. Then he gets them on and realizes that it isn’t a suit after all.

“What the hell do I need a tux for?” Sam calls as he tries to figure out the bowtie. He hasn’t had to knot one of these since his senior prom, and he couldn’t manage it then either; Dean had to do it for him. His hands stutter and then stop as he remembers the look of amusement on his brother’s face: the easy, methodical way he worked through the looping knot.

Dean’s always had clever hands.

“Because you want to fit in tonight,” Bela says.

Sam jumps, whirling around to find her in the dressing room with him. He pulls the jacket closed. Feels a flush creeping up his throat. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to tell that you’re hopelessly inept. Here.” She steps closer and lifts his chin up with one hand, eyes focused on the dangling ends of the bowtie. Her fingers perform some intricate dance—faster than Dean’s, more impatient—and Sam is suddenly having difficulty breathing.

“Little tight,” he gasps.

Bela steps back and smoothes down his jacket. “It’s supposed to be.” She draws her gaze up and down his body with a critical tilt to her eyebrows. Then, pursing her lips, she gives a nod. “You’ll do. We’ll take this and, hrm, five of the suits—any of the black or charcoals. I’ll have Andre pick out some ties.”

She turns to leave, but her words have finally sunk in through Sam’s bewilderment. Grabbing her wrist, he yanks her back from the door.

“’Fit in tonight’?” he says. “Where the hell are we going?”

Bela’s mouth goes thin and hard. “Let go of me,” she insists.

Sam just tightens his grip. She isn’t going to pull a gun on him in the store, and she isn’t going to call for help if he gets a little violent. If she did, the police would inevitably get involved, and she needs him just as much as he needs her. That realization stuns him for a moment, and he rolls it around in his head, tasting it.

For the past twenty-four hours, he’s been so focused on how much he needs her that he completely missed out on the fact that the reverse is also true. She wants something from Dean, and in order to get it she needs to get him away from Vincent. And to do that, she needs Sam’s help. She needs him and she hates it, and she’s been keeping back information because she knows it’s driving him nuts and she’s deriving some bitter satisfaction from pissing him off. Amusing herself with his pain.

Smug, sadistic, sociopathic bitch.

“Tell me,” he demands. “Tell me what’s going to happen tonight.” When Bela remains defiantly silent, he twists her wrist hard enough to make her arrogant mask slip in a wince.

“Vincent Camargo is an entertainer,” she says, voice clipped with anger. “He caters to the wealthy, anything they want. Exotic hunts, illegal substances, high class prostitutes, gambling.”

“Which of those categories does Dean fall under?” Sam can feel the bones in her wrist grating together: she’ll be wearing his fingerprints like a bracelet in a few hours. He finds the thought oddly satisfying.

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.” Sam draws her closer and offers her a tight smile. “Now, you can either start telling me the truth, or I can break your wrist. Your choice.”

Bela hisses in pain as Sam bends her hand just a little bit further and then snaps, “He wanted Dean for the Arena.”

“The Arena,” Sam repeats. She tries to pull her hand out of his grip and he hangs on. Digs his nails into her skin. “Which is what, exactly?”

Bela gives up struggling and stands there panting, her cheeks flushed with a combination of pain and anger. “Think of it as human cock-fighting,” she bites out.

Sam stares at her. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. On the one hand, it’s better than he was expecting: better than Dean being tortured or fucked or hunted like he’s nothing more than exotic game. On the other, it’s just so totally and completely fucked up.

“You sold my brother to some kind of underground fight club?” he blurts. “Are you _insane_?”

“If this is how you’re going to react, I’m glad I told you now,” Bela hisses back. “Pull a scene like this tonight and you’ll completely blow our cover.” She tries to pull her hand free again and Sam refuses to let go. He just had a nasty, unpleasant thought.

“To the death?” he says. “Is it to the death?”

“Vincent modeled the Arena after the ancient gladiatorial contests. He lets the audience decide the fate of the loser.”

Sam thinks about the type of person liable to seek out ‘entertainment’ like that, and knows that if Dean’s still alive, he’s had to kill. More than once. If there’s a way to hurt Dean more than that—to shove a knife inside of his soul and shred up everything that makes him who he is: protector, champion, hero—Sam doesn’t know what it is.

“I ought to kill you,” he grates.

“But you won’t,” Bela responds immediately. “You need me to get you in.”

Sam stares down at her and wants to do it anyway. He’s never hated anyone before, has never known how, but Bela’s a good teacher. He could leave her a red smear on the dressing room wall and sleep nightmare free.

In the end, though, she’s right, and necessity forces him to open his hand.

She steps back as soon as he releases her, rubbing at her wrist gingerly, and stands just out of reach.

“Can we get him out tonight?” Sam asks.

Bela shakes her head. “I’ll need at least a week to set things up. And I need to get a look at the facility; see what kind of security we’re up against.”

Sam nods, jaw locked on a frustrated scream. After a moment, the pressure in his throat lessens and he’s able to say, “If he dies—if you fuck this up or double cross us in any way—I’ll kill you.”

Bela blinks at him, that high color still in her cheeks, and then nods. “Fair enough.”


	8. The Arena

The Arena is actually miles outside of Las Vegas, nestled in the foothills of the mountains. There are no high walls around the perimeter, no electrified fences, but they’re hardly necessary with sheer rock face at the building's rear and a seemingly endless stretch of desert in the remaining three directions. It would take someone hours to walk out of here on foot—no running in the desert sun—and surely by then they’d be tracked and cornered. A car would help them make a fast getaway, but there’s only one road and Sam thinks that, in the end, it would be safest to fly.

He pulls at the collar of his tux and wonders if Bela has a helicopter pilot on call.

Bela lays a hand on his forearm. The bruises on her wrist are only partially concealed by the clunky monstrosity of a bracelet she’s wearing. “Remember, tonight is just reconnaissance,” she reminds him as the limousine inches closer to the front door, fourth in a line of luxury vehicles now.

“I remember,” Sam says shortly. He drops his hand and stares out the window at their destination. From the outside, the Arena looks like nothing more than a fancy estate, built in a sprawling ranch style with three or four horses milling around in an enclosure to one side.

Appearances can be deceiving, though, and Sam knows for certain that there’s more to this place than he can see because the cars ahead of them keep disappearing into a garage that looks barely big enough to hold two cars at the same time. The building isn’t flush with the mountain, so he can only figure that the real garage is underground. There’s probably a car lift inside that small building, specifically installed to lower the guests’ vehicles one by one into something more closely resembling a parking garage.

Looking at the house, Sam guesses that the actual fighting ring is probably subterranean as well. All the better to hide it if anyone official gets curious and comes out here for a peek.

“You’re going to see some things you aren’t going to like,” Bela warns.

Sam snorts and doesn’t reply.

“You need to keep your temper. You aren’t going to do Dean any good if you get us both shot.”

“I’ll be fine,” Sam says without looking at her. It’s a lie: he has no idea what he’s going to do when he finally sees Dean after all this time, but he’s pretty sure it won’t be very rational. He just has to hope that he’ll be able to cover any mistakes he makes.

Their limousine pulls up in front of the main doors and a man in a smart black uniform opens Sam’s door for him. Sam unfolds himself from the car and then extends a hand in for Bela. He doesn’t doubt he’ll see more upsetting things inside, but this right here is going to be the most disgusting part of the night hands down: playing Bela’s escort. Pretending that he actually _likes_ her.

Bela takes his hand and lets him help her out, offering a gracious smile to the uniformed man still holding the door open. “Bela Talbot and guest,” she says, and the man nods.

“Right this way, madam.”

Sam does his best to project bored, rich asshole as he escorts Bela up the short row of steps and in through the front door. There aren’t any suspicious looks—nothing but a fawning servility that’s going to get on his nerves fast—so he figures he’s doing a good job. Long years of practice with his father and Dean allow him to hold that mask while scanning his surroundings for the information they’re going to need. So far, he’s only seen the foyer and he isn’t feeling very optimistic.

There’s something that’s either a metal detector or an x-ray machine imbedded in the front doorframe. It’s concealed enough by the wood-colored paint not to be readily noticeable, but Sam is looking and he catches the tiny glint of the red operating light. Bela’s insistence that neither of them come armed suddenly makes more sense.

There are three cameras that Sam can see, which means that there are probably at least two more than he can’t. They’re all aimed at different areas of the foyer, transmitting images of Vincent’s milling guests back to some distant central brain.

Most worrying, though, is the fact that while some of the men in the black uniforms don’t seem to be any more than hired help, there’s a significant peppering who hold themselves in a way that reminds Sam of his father, and Dean, and all of the other career hunters he’d ever met. Men who know how to handle themselves. Who know how to spot a potential problem and take it out. Sam can’t tell for sure if they’re armed or not, but men like that usually are.

He’s so busy noticing the pertinent details that the opulence of his surroundings goes pretty much unnoticed. He moves forward with Bela on his arm and the faint impression of gleaming wood and golden fixtures; of dark paneled walls and luxuriant potted plants and imposing statues and paintings hung in ornate, hand-carved wooden frames. The other guests are greeting each other in shiny, fake voices—kiss on the cheek, hand brushing lightly on an arm. There’s the scent of expensive perfume in the air and the sparkle of light on jeweled necks.

Bela guides him through it all, taking him unerringly to an unassuming section of wall where a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man stands at attention. His nose is bent in the middle, an obvious sign of having been broken and badly set, and from the bruising around his flat, grey eyes, it’s a recent injury.

 _Did Dean do that?_ Sam wonders as they draw up in front of the man. There’s no reason even to suspect it, but somehow Sam is certain he’s looking at his brother’s handiwork.

“Bela,” the man says. “Didn’t expect to see you for another month.” His eyes slip to Sam and narrow a little. “Who’s the muscle?”

The question wipes away the flash of Bela-flavored suspicion that the man's first words aroused. Sam hasn’t considered the fact that the professional men in Vincent’s employ would recognize him as easily as he does them. He tenses, worried that he’s blown their cover before they’ve had a chance to get anywhere, and Bela tightens her hold on his forearm.

“I’m here as a spectator tonight, Hank,” she says easily. “And this is Simon. I know he looks fierce, but he’s perfectly harmless.” She beams up at him. “I found him in Rome, of all places.”

“He don’t look Italian,” Hank observes sourly.

“I’m not,” Sam answers. “I was doing a semester abroad with Harvard.” Rolling his eyes over toward Bela, he asks with an annoyed sneer, “Is the help supposed to be talking to us this way?”

Hank bristles as Bela laughs. “Sorry about Simon, Hank: he’s a little temperamental.” Turning her attention up to Sam, she explains, “Hank isn’t help, darling: he’s a business associate.”

“What kind of business?” Sam asks. It’s only half in character. Now that he’s over his scare, his thoughts are returning to Hank’s greeting, and he wants to know what Bela was supposed to be doing here next month.

“None of yours,” Bela answers before Hank can say anything, and then gives him a kiss on the cheek. Sam supposes it’s supposed to mollify him, and he can’t really see any way that a spoiled rich kid would care one way or another, so he shrugs.

“Sorry,” he offers to Hank.

Hank eyes the width of Sam’s shoulders, the bulk underneath his tuxedo, the competent way he’s holding himself, and looks unconvinced. “You don’t look like some college boy,” he notes.

Sam’s mouth tilts up into a wry smile that’s unfaked because the truth of the matter is, he _was_ a college boy. Maybe not right now, maybe not ever again, but he was. He sat in Stanford’s dining hall and brushed elbows with boys who lived the life that he pretends to tonight. One boy in particular he thinks of now: Alan Cross of Cross Athletics, the third largest athletic supplier in the country, and Sam’s partner in his Chemistry lab sophomore year. Alan, who was even bigger than Sam and into ultimate fighting. He didn’t look like a college boy either.

“Just because I have a brain doesn’t mean I don’t know how to take care of myself,” Sam says. He heard the same line coming from Alan’s mouth more times than he can count. Then, because the words sounded a little more threatening than he meant them to, he adds, “I box. Varsity.”

Like a flipped switch, the caution in Hank’s eyes shifts to scorn. “Varsity, huh?” he laughs. “You wanna go a few rounds, Harvard?”

“Play nice, boys,” Bela says, stepping between them. She has one hand on Sam’s chest, like that’s going to stop him from wiping the floor with this asshole if he wants to. Sam blinks as the force of his hate penetrates. There’s no reason those few words should have gotten to him like that: no reason for the open scorn to have ignited his rage.

But he’s spoiling for a fight: has been since he got into the car tonight. These fuckers have Dean, they’ve been forcing him to fight, to kill. Sam wants to light the house on fire and leave the bastards inside to burn. He wants to reach out and take the gun he can see outlined underneath Hank’s jacket and unload the entire clip into his smug, hateful face.

For a moment, the rage spins out of control inside of him, and then he goes blackly, icily cold. Because he’s getting Dean back, and he isn’t going to let his own, weak emotions get in the way of that.

“Sorry, Bela,” he says. Then, flicking his eyes back to Hank, he offers, “Some other time.” There’s no reason for ‘Simon’ to be polite to the man, after all. Besides, it’s nothing but the truth. He and Dean aren’t leaving here without taking these bastards apart.

 _You hurt him,_ Sam thinks, eyes dipping to Hank’s healing nose. There’s a vague sensation of something in his head turning over and the room … Bela … Sam himself … disappear. Hank is still there, but it’s a different place _(when)_ and he’s standing over Sam’s brother.

Dean is chained, kneeling on the floor of a cramped room with his neck and hands and feet locked into position, and Hank is kicking him. Heavy, solid kicks to Dean’s ribs that drive the breath from Dean’s mouth, that push anything sane or rational from his eyes and send him snarling up from the floor, chains ripping free from the wall and floor where they were moored. Dean still doesn’t have full use of his arms and legs all the same, not enough range of motion when his wrists and ankles are chained together, but he manages to slam his forehead into the bridge of Hank’s noise.

There’s a brittle cracking sound and then the hallway—the now—floods back in. Whatever happened—vision, daydream, who the fuck knows—it doesn’t seem to have taken any time because no one is staring at Sam like he has two heads.

Hank is still wearing that superior little grin as he nods and says, “Sure,” and for a moment Sam thinks he won’t be able to hold himself back, he’s going to launch himself on this son of a bitch and it’ll all be over. But then the man turns around, offering Sam his back, and the rage subsides.

Hank slides open a small panel in the wall and Sam catches a glimpse of the keypad inside before the man’s shoulders block his view. There are five high-pitched beeps—a code—and then a larger portion of the wall slides back to reveal the interior of an elevator, golden sides polished and gleaming.

“Enjoy the show,” Hank says, and tips Sam a grin as Bela pulls him into the elevator. “I’m sure it’ll be more entertaining than anything you’ve seen at Harvard.”

“You’d be surprised what I’ve seen,” Sam says, and then the door slides shut.

Bela is on him immediately, pushing him up against the wall and biting at his jaw. Stunned, Sam just stands there and lets her maul him for a few seconds. He’s on the verge of shoving her away when he realizes that there’s the red light of a camera watching them and then Bela starts hissing at him under her breath.

“What the fuck was that?” she demands, licking at his throat. “You’re supposed to be part of the clientele, Sam, not some common street ruffian.”

Sam grips her arms and ducks his head down to nuzzle at her neck beneath the curtain of her hair. It makes him sick to have his mouth this close to her skin, but he shoves the nausea away to answer, “He was being an asshole. I channeled my inner Vanderbilt. Deal with it.”

“Fine,” Bela snaps back, giving him a vicious bite to his ear. “But you have to control your temper from now on, or you’re going to blow our cover and then Dean will spend the rest of his natural life—which I can assure you will be very, _very_ long—as Vincent’s prize pet.” She turns her head, catching his lips in a bruising, angry kiss, and then steps back as the doors ding open.

Sam follows her out into a narrow hallway with his lips sore and his ear stinging where she bit him. He can taste her in his mouth, the waxy taint of her lipstick, and has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from spitting in disgust. When this is all over, he’s going to take a long, scalding shower and then curl up with Dean. And Dean can just suck it up and let Sam hold him for a few days because he fucking deserves it after what his brother has put him through.

Then Sam steps out into the Arena proper and all he can think is that, whatever he was expecting, it isn’t this.

At first glance, the Arena looks like some strange mating of opera house and oversized hamster ball. Then he realizes that, while the opera comparison isn’t that far off—the raised structure he’s standing on resembles nothing more than the balcony section, complete with rows of cushioned, red velvet seats—the hamster ball part is all wrong.

Because while the structure rising up into the center of the seats is rounded, it’s made of metal mesh, not plastic. And as Sam moves further into the room, he can see the white mat of the floor, almost twenty feet below and completely enclosed by the cage. He presses past Bela, moving right up to the edge of the balcony, and leans over. There are no seats below: only darkness and open space surrounding the lit circle of the cage. He thinks he can see the smear of bloodstains on the mat.

Some of that blood is his brother’s.

Someone touches his arm. Bela at his shoulder like the proverbial devil. “Sam,” she starts.

“I’m fine,” he interrupts, voice harsh. And he is. He feels colder—harder—than he has in months. Dean is here somewhere, Dean is close enough that Sam’s skin is prickling with the awareness of his brother’s presence, and if it is the last thing he does, Sam is going to pull him out of here and then burn the place to the ground. Salt the fucking ashes.

“Bela!” a voice calls from behind them.

Schooling his face, Sam glances over his shoulder to find a short, bearded man in a bright blue suit making his way toward them down one of the isles. There are already a few people here, sitting in their seats and sipping glasses of champagne, and more coming in through the front entrance, and this guy is nodding and waving cheerfully at all of them. He doesn’t stop on his path over, though, coming to a stop just out of reach.

“I was surprised to get your message,” he says. His eyes are the color of newly minted dollar bills, and he flicks them over Sam in an assessing manner. “There wasn’t a problem with the payment, was there?”

“No,” Bela assures him. “Everything’s fine. My new friend Simon has an interest in the sport, though, and naturally I thought of you.”

The man looks at Sam again, and this time his smile is a little warmer. “So, you’re Bela’s latest catch, eh?” he says, taking a step nearer and holding out his hand. “Vincent Camargo.”

Sam’s vision fogs over with red. He sees himself as if from a distance reach out and take the man’s hand. Shake it twice and then release.

“Simon Carver,” Sam says, and thinks, _I’m going to kill you._ He forces himself to smile, bottling all of the rage into compact, burning determination. “Nice set up you’ve got here. I’d love to get a closer look, if that’s allowed.”

Vincent laughs. “For a friend of Bela’s, I’m sure we can arrange a tour.” He rubs his hands together briskly and then says, “Well! You’ll be wanting your usual seat, yes?”

“Of course,” Bela agrees, and they follow Vincent around to a private box.

“We’ve got something special tonight,” Vincent announces as they sit down. “You’ll have to tell me what you think after.”

“Actually, I was hoping to arrange a private audience tonight—for Simon. I realize that you’re probably booked well in advance, but we’re only in town for a few days and I promised him a treat.”

Vincent’s mouth twitches. “And here I always thought you were the jealous type,” he says, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Then his eyes catch on something over their heads and Sam can feel his attention shift. “I’ll see what I can work out,” he promises, already striding away to speak with a tall, graying man who can’t seem to stop playing with his moustache.

“Thank God it worked,” Bela murmurs. “I thought for sure he’d recognize you: Protean charms aren’t terribly powerful, but I didn’t want to risk bringing anything stronger past Vincent’s wards.”

Sam stares at her blankly and she brushes the set of cuff links she gave him before they left the Bellagio. Or maybe she’s just indicating the tiny, clear stones the cuff links are set with. “Protean charms,” she tells him. “They subtly alter the way that the wearer is perceived. It isn’t much, but it should be enough that no one will recognize you.”

Of course. Sam doesn’t know why it didn’t occur to him before, but Vincent would surely know what Dean’s brother looked like. He considers being angry with himself for being too worked up over Dean to consider that—he could have blown their cover, could have screwed everything up—but anger isn’t going to solve anything. Besides, this is the end game, here on the other side of months alone and aching, and there’s no room inside of Sam for anything but the steel of determination.

He turns over the conversation with Vincent in his mind, looking for anything useful. He doesn’t know how Bela thought she could lie to him without him finding out eventually: everyone here obviously recognizes her, and she had to know that he’d notice that when she was lying about knowing what was happening to Dean. Which means that she really was just doing it for her own amusement—for the sake of enjoying his reaction when he found out. Twisted bitch.

Reaching over to her seat, Sam takes her hand like the besotted boy he’s pretending to be and then grips as hard as he can. Bela lets out a little gasp but doesn’t show any other sign that anything’s wrong. Smiling, Sam leans over and whispers, “Usual seat?”

“Breaking my hand isn’t going to get you answers, but it will make it more difficult to get Dean out,” Bela says.

“I’m not breaking anything,” Sam answers. “It hurts like hell, but you’ll still be able to move all your fingers. Now, you’re going to clear things up for me, and I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”

“I didn’t lie to you, Sam.” Bela says tightly. “Vincent moves the Arena around every few months. Makes it more difficult to trace. Last month he was in Morocco. Two months before that, it was London. I had no way of knowing which location he was using now.”

“But you’ve been to one of his Arenas before,” Sam presses. “You went to see Dean.”

Bela gives him an unreadable look. “Your brother is a fascinating man.”

Sam opens his mouth to ask about the payment business, and whatever she’s supposed to be doing here in a month, and then the lights are lowering. Bela uses his momentary distraction to snatch her hand away, leaving him gripping air.

An excited murmur starts up around the balcony, filling the darkness. From below, there’s the grinding noise of a machine working—of metal sliding against metal—and it can’t be anything but the door to the cage opening. A moment of near-silence, interrupted only by the shuffling noises that fill any theater after lights down, follows and then the door clangs as it’s closed again. A spotlight flashes on abruptly, illuminating the cage.

There are three men on the center of the mat, none of them Dean. Only two of them look like fighters: clad in bright, lycra shorts and carrying short lengths of chain. The third man is wearing a suit and holding a microphone in one hand. Sam tunes out the booming introduction in favor of pursuing his line of questioning.

“What’s going on, Bela? Payment for what? What’s happening next month?”

“You don’t think that Dean’s the only thing I’ve procured for Vincent, do you?” Bela responds. Now that he isn’t hurting her, her voice is light again: carefree mask back in place. “I’m on a monthly retainer. Whatever supplies he needs that can’t be obtained through normal channels, I acquire for him. It’s a very simple business arrangement.”

“And you helping me get Dean back, that’s not going to screw this up for you?”

Bela gives him a patient look. “There are more things to life than money, Sam.”

Yeah, Sam knows that. He just doesn’t think Bela does.

But then a loud buzzer sounds and Sam’s attention is drawn down to the fight that’s beginning below them. It isn’t pretty: two men whipping chains at each other is never going to be pretty. There’s something even uglier about this, though: something about the entire thing that turns Sam’s stomach. The bellowed pain, the blood that flows out to dampen the mat, the anticipatory mutters of the audience. It feels dirty, and demeaning, and wrong. Sam has always tried to believe the best of people, but sitting here in the dark he can’t quite remember why that is.

When the fight is finally over, one of the men is down and cradling his right leg, which looks broken in two places. After a few moments when the victor whirls his chain through the air, four lights—a red and green shine that reminds Sam of Christmas—gleam out from the railing in front of Sam. He glances over at Bela and without looking at him she says, “Red for death. Green for life.”

Sam immediately reaches out and presses both of the green buttons. Bela’s mouth twitches. “What’s wrong? Don’t trust me, Sam?”

That goes without saying, so he doesn’t respond.

A moment later, the white light illuminating the arena floods green. Sam blinks, surprised, as the winner snaps his chain one final time before bowing to an appreciative round of applause. It’s the decorous restraint of the clapping more than the loser’s reprieve that startles him. Such a normal, civilized sound. Like these people weren’t just howling for blood like a raving mob.

Two men in black run out onto the mat and half-drag, half-carry the loser out of the cage. There’s a pause to mop up one or two slick spills of blood, and then the announcer comes back out, followed by two new fighters. There aren’t any weapons involved this time, but it isn’t any cleaner with just their fists. There aren’t any rules here, just winning.

As one of the fighters grabs his opponent's balls and squeezes, Sam averts his eyes and asks, “How many fights are there?”

“Three, normally,” Bela answers. “Two to work the audience up and then the main event.”

 _Dean,_ Sam thinks, glancing back at a particularly excited roar from the crowd. One of the fighters—the one who just had his balls crushed—has the other man’s head by the hair and is smashing his face into the side of the cage. There’s only so much of that kind of thing anyone can take, and when the fighter finally drops his opponent, the man crumples to the mat in a dazed heap.

Once again, four lights gleam in the darkness and after a few moments there’s another wash of green over the cage. Although he’s relieved to see the color, Sam can’t shake the feeling that the men and women around him are saving their hunger.

Saving it for Dean.

Vincent strolls out onto the mat as his men do a quick wipe-down around him, one of the black-clad men helping the dazed fighter out. There’s no microphone in his hand, but there must be one clipped to the lapel of his suit because when he speaks, his voice booms out through the darkness.

“Esteemed guests,” he greets. “Ladies … gentlemen …” His eyes lift up to the place where Sam and Bela sit and he inclines his head in a short nod. “ … colleagues …” Turning in a slow circle, he continues, “Welcome. Welcome to the Arena. You all know that I’m not much for showmanship—” He pauses while the room fills with polite laughter and then, grinning, continues, “—so I’ll get straight to the blood.”

Through the open door in the cage, three men tumble into the arena in an impressive display of acrobatics. They’re barefoot and bare-chested, wearing bright, loose-fitting pants and back scabbards. They’re alike enough in body and face that Sam suspects they’re related—cousins if not brothers—and the easiest way for him to tell them apart is by the color of their pants—yellow on the first, red on the second, and blue on the third. They take up positions in a triangle around Vincent, drawing swords—katanas—from their sheathes with easy familiarity.

“Let me introduce the Flying Dragons,” Vincent says, and swords twirl and gleam in the light. “They have studied their craft from boyhood, savants of sword and acrobatics, and today they are the highest paid assassins in the eastern hemisphere. They have heard of our marvel, and wish to test their blades against the power of night.”

He gestures to the cage door with a flourish and on his signal two men enter. They’re each carrying a lead of shining silver, trailing back from their hands to … Dean. His head is lowered, but his shoulders are held at a tense, defiant angle. He’s wearing the same loose, flowing pants as the Dragons and nothing else. The black fabric is startling against his pale skin, making him almost seem to shine in comparison. His hair is longer than Sam remembers it ever being: not down to his neck, not long enough to get into his eyes, but shaggy. Wolfish. He moves with a sharpness that Sam doesn’t remember, flinching edgily at the roar of approval from the crowd above, and he’s unmindful of the chains fettering his wrists. Of the collar banding his neck.

He isn’t wearing the amulet.

Sam’s chest clenches and he grabs at the arms of the chair in a reflexive attempt to keep himself from falling as the world drops out from under him. Months of searching and he hasn’t once let himself think about the amulet: about what it would mean to Dean if his abductors took it away from him. There’s a cold, calculating part of him that expected this, but it’s drowned out momentarily by the remnants of the boy he once was: the boy who ran to his big brother when he tripped on the sidewalk and scraped his knees. The boy who believed that Dean would always be there for him, larger than life and brighter than the sun.

As the handlers lead Dean to Vincent’s side and unchain him, Sam wonders whether there’s anything left of his brother to save.

“He comes to us from the farthest reaches of time and myth,” Vincent recites. “The soul and ferocity of a wolf chained to the body of a man. The Fenrir.”

Dean’s head comes up with a jerk to scan the balcony. The audience has to have seen this before—most of them, anyway—but there’s a collective gasp at the movement, and Sam can hear his own harsh exhalation among them.

Dean’s eyes—those beautiful, blazing eyes that Sam can’t quite picture in his memory anymore—aren’t green but amber. They flash in the lights: inhuman. Dean’s face looks leaner than Sam remembers, and his expression is intent. Hungry. His muscles bunch and he rolls his shoulders, restless, only to quiet at a touch from Vincent’s hand.

Vincent slides his hand up from Dean’s shoulder to the back of his head, pressing, and Dean sinks obediently to his knees. He leans forward on his hands, bowing his head and baring his neck to the room. There’s something inked between his shoulder blades in shocking, dark lines, and Sam shivers uncontrollably as he stares at it.

The tattoo has been done in a tribal style, all lines and jagged edges, but the wolf at the center is clear enough. Toothed, ebony threads surround the wolf in a cage of thorned vines, and Sam thinks there might be runes interwoven with the rest of the design. The whole thing reeks of ritual.

“I have caged his power with my mark, and he is mine to command,” Vincent boasts. He’s crouched beside Dean, his hand stroking over Dean’s head like he’s nothing more than a prized hunting dog. “I give him to your wishes on this night. I dedicate him to the lords of war.”

Taking his hand off of Dean, he stands again and pulls something out of his pocket. When he raises his hand to dangle the object high over his head, Sam squints and realizes that it’s a pair of black goggles.

“Tonight,” Vincent announces, moving to stand behind Dean. “The Fenrir fights blind.”

Sam is half out of his seat before Bela can pull him back down, but his shout of denial is drowned out by the crowd’s approving roar.

“You do this now and he’s stuck here,” she hisses, nails digging into his arm. Sam knows she’s right, and the thought of Dean living out the rest of his life like this is enough to cut through the surge of hateful rage choking out his reason.

Jerking his arm from Bela’s grip, he leans forward against the railing and looks back down into the cage in time to see Vincent exiting. As the door swings shut, Sam reminds himself that Dean is too valuable for Vincent to kill, no matter how overwhelming the odds look right now.

Dean is wearing the goggles, those gold eyes hooded, and he’s on his feet again, still in a way that only wild animals can manage. His head is cocked to one side, and Sam can practically feel his brother listening: all of his attention focused on the one useful sense left to him. Trying to mark out his opponents, surrounding him in a deadly triangle with their katanas raised.

There’s no buzzer to signal the beginning of the fight, only the sound of the door clanging shut and the sudden rush of the Dragons toward Dean.

Dean ducks Red’s swipe and catches Blue’s wrist with his right hand. Yellow swings his blade on a slanting arc and catches Dean across the chest in a shallow cut that draws a thin line of beading blood.

Dean’s lips draw back in a silent snarl and he steps back, out of the path of Yellow’s second swing, and as he moves he twists Blue’s wrist. The man makes a hurt cry and drops the sword. Dean whirls, rolling to one side as Red takes a swing at his head and shoving Blue into the path of the blade. The katana bites deeply into the side of the man’s neck and there’s a brilliant spray of red. Sam can tell from the force of the blood that the wound is fatal, but Dean’s hands fasten on the man’s head anyway, twisting it sharply to one side. The sound of breaking bone is lost amid the crowd’s hungry roar, and Yellow uses the cover of the noise to open Dean’s side.

Dean’s unbelievably fast, pulling away at the first sting in his flesh, but the damage is already done and he’s dripping a steady stream of red down onto the mat. Sam wants to scream at the crowd to shut up already, but there’s no need. After a moment, they realize that the sound of their enjoyment is hampering the show and they restrain themselves to a low, excited murmur.

Dean uses the near-silence to put some distance between himself and the two remaining Dragons, sprinting away from the center of the mat and putting his back against the wall of the cage. With one hand pressed against his side, he turns his head from side to side blindly, tracking the faint sounds of movement as the Dragons edge after him.

They’re more cautious this time, taking care to move silently and staying out of reach. They pepper him with thin cuts he can’t avoid, one of them feinting in and sending Dean dodging into the other’s sword. It isn’t long before they’ve forced Dean away from the safety of the wall.

Sam tenses as he realizes that they’re herding Dean toward the body. Dean’s hearing in uncanny, but even he can’t hear the dead, and in a few moments he’s going to trip over the body and Red and Yellow are going to cut him wide open. Sam’s about to yell a warning and fuck his cover when Dean turns sharply, ducking underneath a vicious swipe of Yellow’s blade, and jumps clean over the body. He lands in a low crouch on the other side and twists his head back to listen for pursuit.

For a few moments, Sam stares with his mouth hanging open. The audience has forgotten itself and broken out into thunderous applause again, but this time Dean is ready for it and he keeps well away from the pursuing Dragons despite the roar of sound. Sam watches his brother keep well out of range and wonders for the first time if this is faked.

There’s no way that Dean could have known that body was there: no way he could be keeping away from his opponents now. Not unless he can actually see through those goggles. Then Dean tilts his head up in eerie mimicry of a motion Sam has seen from Bobby’s dogs hundreds of times.

Holy hell, he’s tracking them by scent.

Dean _smelled_ the body—the blood—and moved to avoid it. The same way he’s moving to avoid the remaining two Dragons now. That’s why he’s staying so far away from them: his sense of smell isn’t good enough to know where the katanas are—for that he needs to be able to _hear_.

It isn’t possible, what Dean’s doing. Not for anything human, anyway. Sam has never seen his brother like this, not even in those dark days after their father’s death, but he remembers talking with John while Dean was asleep in the bed behind them. Manning, Colorado, that was, and John’s eyes kept sliding over to Dean, wistful and longing for the very thing Dean was desperate not to give in to.

John told him then, everything that Dean hadn’t. Told him about the night in the woods with the goblins, and how goddamned perfect Dean had been: like a force of nature, a whirl of muscle and blade that the goblins hadn’t been able to touch, hadn’t been able to flee from. Told Sam how strong Dean would be if he accepted the gift he’d been offered instead of fighting it tooth and nail.

Sam listened because he was hungry for knowledge: wanted to know everything he could about those years apart, the ones Dean refused to talk about. He listened and then he said, coldly, ‘Nothing’s worth losing your humanity. Nothing.’

But watching Dean now he can understand how John might have fooled himself into believing that this was worth it. There’s something about the sheer impossibility of the way that Dean moves that draws him in. Something free and unfettered in the feral gleam of his teeth.

It makes the metal band circling Dean’s neck that much more horrible to look at. Sam’s suddenly overcome with the need to see his brother like this under the open sky, golden eyes glinting and muscles awash with silver moonlight. He’s blindsided by an image of Dean sprinting through the woods, bare chest dappled by the interwoven branches of the trees above: Dean moving like a whirlwind after anything foolish enough to threaten his territory. As beautiful and untouchable as the moon.

Then he thinks of Dean blowing bubbles in his Coke with a wicked gleam in his eyes because he knows it annoys the hell out of Sam, of Dean flicking cold French fries at him across the table, or unscrewing the top of the salt shaker a little before handing it over, and the wave of loss that washes over him is so strong that he can’t help from making a little, hurt noise that is lost amid the last, lowering remnants of the crowd’s roar.

Sam is still struggling to shove that pain aside when Red gets impatient and rushes his brother. The crowd has all but silenced itself by now, and Yellow yells a rebuke but it’s too late. There are well over a dozen small gashes on Dean’s torso, and the wound in his side is still bleeding sluggishly, but he moves like he hasn’t been touched, stepping to one side and grabbing the man as he goes past.

Dean’s hands slide down Red’s forearm, where he caught him, and find his wrist. He grips the pressure points Dad taught them would release all the muscles in a man’s hand and Red’s hand jerks open. This time, Dean darts forward and catches the falling blade in an unbelievable movement that has the audience on their feet and cheering again. Keeping one hand on Red’s wrist to mark the man’s location, Dean adjusts his grip on the blade and then swings it in a short arc.

The man’s stomach opens, spilling out his insides onto the mat. He’s screaming shrilly, audible even over the crowd, and Dean lifts his hand from the man’s wrist to feel blindly for his face. He pats his cheek twice in a hesitant, almost innocent gesture, and then swings the blade again. This time the katana opens the man’s throat, cutting deep enough that his head falls back and his spine stares up at the ceiling. His screams cut off immediately and his body falls to the mat, nothing more than a sac of meat.

Dean’s away from him just in time to avoid having his back split open by Yellow’s sword. As it is, he has another deep gash running through his right shoulder, and he has to switch his grip on the katana to his left hand before he drops the blade.

Sam expects the fight to be over quickly now that Dean only has one opponent to deal with, but half an hour later they’re still circling each other. Dean’s chest is covered with a slick sheen of sweat and blood, and his right pant leg is soaked from a lucky gash across his thigh that has him moving with a limping, rolling gait. Yellow hasn’t gone unmarked himself, of course: his left arm is all but useless at his side, and there’s a deep wound in his chest that caught him right across the collarbone and nearly missed opening his throat as well.

The problem is that the crowd seems content to scream itself hoarse now, and damn Dean’s ability to hear Yellow coming for him. Sam can tell that Dean is having difficulty tracking the man by scent as well: all of the blood that’s been spilled must be soaked over everything else in a blurring wash of iron. To make matters worse, Dean has lost too much blood to keep this up much longer, even with the wolf’s endurance, and Yellow seems to know it: is content to keep his distance and wait.

When Dean’s injured leg finally buckles and drops him to the floor, Sam can’t stop himself from shouting his brother’s name. The word is lost amidst the swell of the audience’s cry as Yellow darts forward, blade lifted for the kill. His sword is angled straight for Dean’s jugular, is going to rip open the vulnerable skin there and splash his life onto the mat.

Sam knows with a nauseating certainty that he’s come all this way just to watch his brother die.

Then Dean moves with a speed that makes everything else he’s done tonight seem slow by comparison, launching himself to his feet and swinging his sword in a wide, blind circle. His sword connects with Yellow’s, knocking it aside, and he adjusts immediately, twisting and shoving his blade forward.

Katanas are meant to be slashing weapons, edged on one side and blunt on the tip. It doesn’t matter. The combination of Yellow’s forward momentum and Dean’s strength drives the blade into the man’s stomach, impaling him all the way up to the hilt. Their bodies collide and Dean is driven back a few paces by the impact. They stand there in the utter, stunned silence of the crowd, close enough that they’re breathing each other’s air, and then Dean shrugs Yellow off of his blade.

As the man collapses back onto the mat, Dean pulls his goggles off with his free hand and squints into the light. His face is expressionless as he steps forward and, putting his weight firmly on his injured leg, rests his other foot on his final opponent’s throat. There’s no sign of the growing weakness his posture signaled a moment ago, and Sam realizes with a relief so strong it’s dizzying that Dean was shamming.

In the dark line of the railing, the red and green lights come on for the third and final time. Although Sam presses the green buttons again, he isn’t surprised by the sickly crimson light that floods the arena. The color makes all the blood look black, Dean’s body slick with oil.

He doesn’t bother with the sword in his left hand: just transfers his weight from one leg to the other and crushes the man’s throat. No hesitation. No sign that he gives a fuck.

It bothers Sam in a way that the other two deaths didn’t: that was self-defense, Dean fighting to stay alive. But the man lying dead beneath Dean’s foot wasn’t a threat to him anymore, too out of it to do more than hold his stomach and scream. He was killed because the rich, sick fucks in the audience wanted to see Dean murder someone.

How many nights has his brother had to do this? How many people have died at Dean’s hands out in the arena?

Maybe it’s a mercy that the wolf is in charge.

The room is silent for a long moment, and then Dean drops the katana and walks deliberately toward the cage’s exit.

Sam doesn’t know who starts it—a woman, he thinks—but suddenly the crowd is chanting, “Fenrir, _Fenrir_ , **FENRIR**.” It’s deafening, and Sam thinks Dean’s shoulders hunch a little under the assault. Then the cage door slides open, and Dean darts through and is gone.


	9. In the Den of the Wolf

“Did you enjoy the show?” Vincent’s all smiles: a façade of civilization with his flashy suit and neatly trimmed beard and manicured nails. Sam knows better, though.

He saw the show.

They’ve moved back upstairs for refreshments, into a lounge that’s big enough to double as a skating rink. There are plush couches everywhere, and waiters circulating with trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. There are also members of what Sam knows this ‘genteel’ society would call the ‘entertainment’: startlingly beautiful young women and men playing court to America’s elite. Sam’s pretty sure that, like everything else in Vincent’s world, they’re for sale.

Sam pretends to be watching one of the women as she strolls past. He doesn’t trust himself to answer Vincent without blowing everything to hell.

Luckily, Bela seems to realize that Sam’s having trouble controlling himself. Linking her arm with his, she offers Vincent a wide smile. “Very, very impressive,” she says. “You trained him to do that?”

“Took a few months, but it was worth it.” Vincent beams. “He’s a fast learner, once he puts his mind to something. What did you think of our Fenrir, Simon?”

It’s a direct question, so Sam has to answer. He forces himself to meet Vincent’s eyes. Smiles. “Fascinating. I didn’t know it was possible to fight like that.” Eat your fucking heart out, Academy.

“Not for a human, no. Our Fenrir is unique in this world: a perfect meld of man and beast.”

“And you have him completely under control? What was the word you used … caged?” Sam asks, thinking of the tattoo. “He seems like a handful.”

Vincent’s smile takes on a sly, knowing cast. “He’s completely obedient, I assure you. Very … accommodating.”

Sam can tell that he’s missing something, but he has no idea what it is. And he senses that he’s _supposed_ to know: supposed to be in on the joke. So instead of asking what the hell Vincent is talking about, he says, “Bela told me about him, but I didn’t actually believe her. I didn’t think it was possible.” There: should be vague enough for a response.

“He does seem too good to be true, doesn’t he?” Vincent agrees, and that conspiratorial gleam in his eyes is deepening. It makes Sam’s stomach twist uncomfortably. “Our own beautiful, tame wolf.”

Bela clears her throat, cutting her eyes nervously toward Sam like she can feel his anger rising. “Speaking of,” she says with the same, patented cheer as always. “I assume you looked into the small matter I spoke with you about earlier?”

“Of course.” Vincent nods and then takes a champagne flute from a passing waiter. “It’s all arranged. Anytime your friend is ready, we’re more than able to accommodate him.”

Sam has no fucking clue what’s going on, but Bela’s fingers are tightening on his forearm in a way that tells him she wants him to play along. He’s tempted to refuse just to piss her off—turnabout is fair fucking play—but it isn’t an impulse he’s going to follow. Not with Dean’s freedom at stake. He realizes that Vincent is looking at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of response.

If Sam is going to have to do something he isn’t going to like—and from the way his gut is churning, he’s pretty sure that this will be one of those things—then he might as well get it over with.

“Now’s good,” he says. The words come out in a hoarse rasp, roughened with unease and disgust at having to pretend he actually _respects_ this man, but Vincent’s smile only widens. He nods at someone behind Sam and when Sam glances over his shoulder, he finds Hank coming toward them.

Just the person Sam wants to deal with right now.

“Take Simon to the guest suite, will you?” Vincent says. And then, to Sam, he adds, “If there’s anything you need, just tell Mr. Mason. He’ll take care of it.”

The fission of tension in Sam’s stomach—the feeling that he’s missing something—intensifies. He glances down at Bela for some kind of confirmation or hint and she shifts closer.

“I’ll see you back at the hotel,” she says out loud and then leans in and kisses his cheek. “Remember: don’t do anything stupid,” she murmurs, too softly for anyone else to hear.

If there was anything she could have said to make him more anxious, Sam doesn’t know what it might be. His skin is crawling: his mind whirling with thoughts of what, exactly, is about to happen. If he didn’t break cover when Dean was being sliced up in front of him, what makes Bela think he will now?

What in God’s name could be worse than what he just saw?

It’s too late to back out of whatever this is, but Sam finds his feet dragging as he follows Hank out of the room and down the hall. He keeps his face carefully neutral as the man leads him back to the elevator and keys in the code. Despite his agitation, this time Sam manages to catch the first two numbers: 4 and 8. He files them away in his mind and then steps through the doors.

Hank follows him inside, and once the doors have closed he says, “Didn’t figure you for the type.”

 _What type?_ The question is on the tip of Sam’s mouth, but he swallows the words before they can fall out. Instead, he says in a distant tone, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to judge a book by its cover?”

Hank raises his hands: that mocking, superior smile firmly in place. “I’m not judging, Harvard. Just saying that if I’d landed a bitch like Bela, I’d be escorting her home instead, you know?”

No, Sam doesn’t know, but he’s starting to get a horrible suspicion. He thinks of the men and women upstairs, and the way that everything had seemed for sale. He wouldn’t put it past Bela to have … purchased … one of them for him. He hasn’t known her long, but even a few minutes in her company would have been enough to know that putting him in an awkward situation would amuse her.

And he can’t even yell at her for it. This ploy of hers is giving Sam an opportunity to see more of the Arena: a desperate necessity if they’re going to make a plan good enough to get Dean out.

Testing the waters, Sam says, “You eat caviar every day and you get sick of it.”

Hank snorts as though he just said something funny. “Need a little ‘meat’ to fill out your diet, I get it.” He glances at Sam and this time there’s a grudging respect in his eyes. “For a college boy, you’re not half as prissy as I thought you’d be.”

The elevator doors slide open again, this time on a long, wood paneled corridor. Judging from the amount of time they were traveling, Sam guesses that they’re at least several floors below Vincent’s showroom. As he follows Hank into the hallway, he wonders just how far down this place really goes and breaks out in a cold sweat at the thought that this might be impossible after all.

No, he can’t think like that. If he does, he’ll lock himself into a panicked despair and just … stop. Stand stock still in this hallway with nothing inside of his eyes until Vincent figures out who he really is and disposes of him.

 _I can do this,_ he reminds himself as Vincent turns him right at a four-way intersection.

“So you need anything, Harvard?” Hank asks from ahead of him. “Supplies?”

Sam has to wonder what kind of supplies he could possibly need for something like this. Is Hank talking about condoms? Or is Sam supposed to assume that he’ll automatically be provided with them? Not that it matters, since nothing’s going to happen.

There’s a whole host of reasons why he isn’t putting his cock anywhere near one of Vincent’s high class whores, ranging from the possibility of STDs, to the fact that Vincent kidnapped his brother and is using Dean in brutal, to-the-death fights like he’s nothing more than a junkyard dog. Faking a bout of impotence will be embarrassing as hell, but it’s a hundred times better than the alternative.

“I’m good,” Sam says, and when Hank grunts an acknowledgement and then falls silent, he turns his attention more firmly to his surroundings.

There are cameras everywhere: no attempt has even been made at concealment here. Double, mahogany doors are set at equal intervals on either side of the hall and burnished to a glossy finish. The wood paneling continues no matter how many turns they make, and the floor looks like marble. Vincent must have spent a small fortune on this level alone.

As the minutes stretch out, Sam loses track of where they are in relation to the elevator, which he’s certain is Hank’s intention. There have been too many turns for them not to have doubled back on their trail at least once: possibly more often than that. The halls are too uniform to tell, and Sam wishes absurdly that he had a piece of chalk so he could leave Xs on the doors. Or maybe some breadcrumbs …

Damn, they desperately need to get their hands on a floor plan of this place.

Abandoning his attempt to keep track of the numerous turns they’re taking, Sam looks more closely at the doors instead. He’s a little distracted by his anger, and by the driving need to get Dean out of here, but he isn’t stupid. He knows what this floor is meant for: saw the people who use these rooms circulating through the lounge upstairs with too-bright smiles and invisible price tags around their necks.

Maybe some of them are already hard at work on the other side of those doors. If that’s the case, then the walls have been well soundproofed; the only noises that Sam can hear are his own footsteps and Hank’s heavier tread before him.

“It’s quiet down here,” he says. As opening gambits go, it’s pretty sad, but Sam needs to fish for information somehow, and he doesn’t know if he has the time to pick Hank’s brain slowly the way he’d prefer to. Quick and dirty is going to have to suffice for now.

There’s a certain amount of superior amusement on Hank’s face as he glances over his shoulder at Sam, but he says, “The suites are all soundproofed, of course. And there aren’t any cameras inside, either.” His voice has gone dull and bored, as if he’s reciting a prepared monologue, and the formality of his next words make Sam certain that’s exactly what he’s doing.

“Here at the Arena, our clients’ privacy is paramount. As far as rules go, no permanent damage. No bondage. Anything gets out of hand and he’s got a panic button. Trust me when I say that you don’t want him to use it. If you do decide that you need anything, I’ll be right outside. Let me know once you’re finished, and I’ll escort you back to your car.”

Hank draws up in front of a double set of doors in a way that tells Sam they’ve reached their destination as well as the end of the scripted speech. The doors don’t look any different from the others they’ve passed. Hell, for all Sam knows, they _have_ passed this room before: maybe multiple times.

“This it?” Sam asks, nodding at the doors. Not because he has any doubts on the matter, but because Hank is obviously waiting for him to say something, and that’s the most innocuous thing he can come up with.

“Yup,” Hank agrees, and cracks the knuckles on his right hand against his left palm. It’s a nervous habit and not a threat. Probably. “Bela bought you the whole night, so you can take your time with him,” he adds, and then pulls the doors open and gestures Sam through.

Sam has been thrown off balance enough by the events of the last few hours that the door is already swinging shut behind him before he realizes that they’re having a pronoun problem here—have been for the last few minutes. He swears softly, no way of telling if this is Bela’s idea of a joke or if she actually thinks he prefers men.

It’s funny because, until Dean, Sam was never really all that attracted to men. Sure, he experimented in college, but that was a few _(seven)_ half-drunken fucks followed by awkward mornings. Now that he thinks about it, every one of the guys reminded him of Dean in some way.

Scrubbing his hand over his face, Sam laughs softly. God, his life can’t possibly get more fucked up. Well, at least the mess he’s currently in will be easy enough to fix. All he has to do is find the man Bela bought for him and let him down easy. Without rousing any suspicions. Maybe get some more information about Vincent’s set up while he’s at it.

Simple, right?

“Hello?” he calls, stepping forward.

The suite, an opulent gleam of reds and golds, is almost as large as the one he and Bela are sharing at the Bellagio. The entranceway is long and spacious, with a living room to the left and a dining room with a wet bar to the right. There’s a fireplace across from the plush couch in the living room, and thick oriental rugs covering the floor. In the dining room, the long table has only two chairs, as if they aren't meant for anything but show, and all of a sudden Sam can’t help but notice that the table is just the right height to bend someone over and …

He jerks his gaze away, looking at the door at the end of the hallway.

Not mahogany this time, but oak inlaid with panels of some even paler wood: ash, maybe. The panels are ornately carved with images of a lush garden, vines curling in on each other and flowers blooming in thick twists, and at the center stands a gnarled yew tree: branches stretching high overhead and roots digging down almost viciously deep. The style looks familiar, and after a moment Sam decides that’s because the same artist who carved this door also designed the tattoo on Dean’s back.

Vincent must have the man on retainer.

Walking forward slowly, Sam approaches the door and places his hand on the center of the tree. The wood is cool underneath his hand, and smooth. The door opens easily.

The room on the other side is dominated by a four-poster bed with crimson damask drapes. There are animal patterns on the heavy cloth: too small and intricately woven for Sam to tell what species without moving closer. There are black silk sheets on the bed, and a mound of pillows. It’s a sickening meld of the Arabian Nights and every pretentious porn movie Sam has ever seen.

On one wall, there’s a full-length mirror that is positioned for a good view of any … activities … on the bed, and an oversized armchair sitting against another. Vincent’s decorator was too classy to put another mirror above the bed, but Sam suspects that there’s a hidden panel in the ceiling, just waiting to slide open if a ‘guest’ wants to get a different angle on the action. A wardrobe and a dresser line the wall to Sam’s left, and there’s a chest at the foot of the bed.

Sam guesses that they don’t hold anything as innocent as clothes.

Leaning forward cautiously, he sees that there’s another door opening off of the bedroom. This one is already hanging open, and Sam catches a sliver of a gold-tiled bathroom that’s probably as ornate as the rest of the place.

He has to wonder how much Bela’s paying to humiliate him like this.

“Hello?” Sam calls again, stepping further into the room. There’s still no response; his ‘companion’ must not be here yet.

What looks like a window in the far wall catches his eye and he strides over to it, surprised. He’s underground—deep enough that it took a minute-long elevator ride to get here—but through the window he can see a wide, empty expanse of desert. The brittle glitter of stars overhead. It isn’t until Sam is standing directly in front of it that he realizes it isn’t a window at all, but a flat television screen: an illusion of open air beneath all this stone and dirt.

How long has it been since Dean has seen the sky? Since he’s felt the warmth of the sun on his skin? A long time, Sam thinks. His brother looked so damned pale under the harsh lights in the cage.

A sound from the main part of the suite makes Sam tense and turn. He didn’t hear it open again, but he’s sure that was the front door closing. Which means he’s no longer alone in here. Nervous, he waits for a few moments, but no one appears in the bedroom doorway. There aren’t any further sounds of movement from outside, either.

Maybe the guy doesn’t know that his ‘guest’ for tonight is already here.

“Hello?” Sam calls, taking a hesitant step forward. Silence greets him in return, but he can tell from the quality that it’s a _listening_ silence.

Someone’s standing out in the main room and waiting for him.

Sam suddenly isn’t so sure of what’s meant to happen here. If this is supposed to be an assignation, then why hasn’t his companion introduced himself? He jerks slightly, startled, as a possibility occurs to him.

God, did Bela set him up? Is she’s up there toasting another job well done with Vincent: another Winchester delivered into his hands? Does she know about the demons? Sam’s ability to command them would sure as hell be useful to someone as corrupt as Vincent.

He glances around the room, looking for some kind of weapon, and his eyes fall on a hefty-looking statue on the dresser. It’s a wolf, hackles raised and snarling, and it’s so fucking appropriate that Sam feels like laughing as he picks it up. Sweat trickles down the back of his neck as he moves toward the door, and his body is strung with tension, but he doesn’t feel particularly nervous.

There’s only annoyance—both at the world in general and Bela in particular—floating on top of the same, strange calm that overtakes his mind in the middle of hunts. It’s a clarity born of adrenaline, and Sam feels ready for anything that might be waiting for him.

If this is some kind of ambush, though, and he’s taken, then he’s going to beg for some quality one on one time with the high class bitch who led him here. Adjusting his grip on the statue, Sam toes the bedroom door wider and peers out into the hall.

Dean is standing just inside the front doors.

His eyes are green again, the exact shade that Sam has been spending months trying to remember. He’s wearing jeans and a soft-looking white shirt that gapes open at his throat to reveal a silver choker. A wolf’s head hangs down from the choker and gleams softly in the light.

Sam’s cold detachment is ripped away in a heartbeat, leaving him staggered and breathless. “Dean,” he whispers. “Oh my God, _Dean_.”

Dropping the statue with a thud, he starts forward. Dean takes a single step back in a defensive, nervous motion, and collides with the doors. Sam hesitates. His eyes drop to the wolf choker banding his brother’s neck and he remembers that this isn’t precisely Dean that he’s dealing with anymore. It’s still his brother’s body, but there may not be anyone home.

Sam swallows and then, lowering his voice to a soothing murmur, says, “Hey, man, are you in there?”

Dean stares at him for a long, painful moment, and then asks flatly, “What the hell did you do to your face, Sam?”

Sam’s heart does a funny little twist—Dean can talk, he’s still there, still fighting—and then his brother’s words penetrate. His eyebrows draw together in confusion before he remembers the cuff links. Bela’s Protean charms.

He doesn’t waste time trying to unhook the charms from his cuffs: isn’t sure he’s thinking well enough to manage it right now anyway. The jacket tears in his haste to get it off, but he doesn’t give a shit. Letting it fall to the floor, he starts forward again.

Dean doesn’t look any happier to see him now that he’s wearing his own face, but he doesn’t move this time, and then Sam is grabbing his brother and pulling him into a hug. Dean is warm and solid and _there_.

Sam can feel his brother’s heartbeat, rabbit-fast against his chest. He can feel Dean’s breath stuttering out in little pants across his collarbone. His chest constricts and he pulls Dean closer.

“Dean,” he murmurs. He can’t seem to stop saying his brother’s name.

Dean’s hands come up to fist in Sam’s shirt. He presses his nose against Sam’s neck and breathes in. His body shudders uncontrollably in Sam’s arms.

“It’s okay,” Sam says, just as he’s imagined doing a hundred times. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Dean suddenly goes stiff in his arms, and a moment later he’s pushing at Sam’s chest, trying to get free.

“Get the fuck off me.”

Sam shakes his head and holds on tighter. “No.”

Dean head butts him.

Sam staggers back, one hand flying to the bridge of his nose, and shouts, “What the hell, man?”

“I told you to get off,” Dean answers.

When Sam squints at him, he’s standing there looking completely impassive. There’s no sign that he was caught up in a violent surge of emotion only moments before. No sign of anything but boredom. Sam swipes a hand beneath his nose, checking for blood, and doesn’t find any. Dean didn’t really hit him that hard: it’s the attack itself that bothers him.

Something flickers through his brother’s eyes too quickly for Sam to decipher and then Dean draws himself up. “You here for a ride, Sammy?” he asks. “Or did you just want to go a round or two?”

For a moment, Sam doesn’t quite get what Dean is saying. It gets lost somewhere between the almost physical relief at finally being with his brother again and the rising apprehension caused by the way that Dean is acting.

Then he remembers what he’s supposedly here for and his chest constricts. _No,_ he thinks. Wants to shout his denial and can’t make his voice work.

Into the silence, Dean adds, “I’m clean, if that’s what you’re worried about. Turns out berserkers can’t catch STDs.”

Sam’s brain refuses to translate. Dean can’t be saying what Sam thinks he is. He _can’t_. But Bela’s reminder not to do anything stupid echoes in Sam’s head, and he knows that he was wrong.

This is worse than watching Dean fight in the arena.

“Promise I don’t bite,” Dean says, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “Not unless you want me to. Didn’t you hear? I’m a good dog. Roll over and play fetch for my Scooby snack.”

Now that Dean has mentioned it, Sam can see the slight glaze in his brother’s eyes, and the gauntness in Dean’s face takes on new meaning. Whatever Vincent gave him has already started to kick in: loosening his muscles, making him pliant and lazy. Images flit through Sam’s head—hands on that pale skin, Dean too drugged to properly fight back—and his stomach rolls in rebellion.

“Stop,” he blurts, pleading.

For a miracle, Dean actually does, shutting his mouth and then pushing past Sam into the living room. He moves carefully, favoring his right leg, and Sam is reminded that he’s hurt. Dean just spent an hour playing tag with sharp objects and Vincent sent him in here to … to …

“Are you okay?” Sam asks, shutting down on that thought.

Dean coughs out a laugh and drops down onto the couch in a sprawl. “Sure. Peachy.”

Sam considers pressing the matter—demanding to see Dean’s injuries—but he can already tell that Dean isn’t going to let him. His brother is up and walking around, and he didn’t wince when he sat on the couch, and that’s going to have to be good enough for now.

Drawn by that impossible, magnetic allure Dean gives off, Sam drifts closer and announces, “I came to get you out.”

Dean snorts and kicks his legs up onto the low coffee table in front of the couch. “Yeah, well, you can turn right around and go home.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t seriously be telling me that you _want_ to be here.” Sam is half-shouting, his voice rising into something bordering on hysterical. How is it that Dean has spent the last six months in hell and _Sam’s_ the one getting upset over it?

Dean’s shoulders lift in careless shrug as he stares at the fireplace. “Cushy digs, all the food I can eat, plenty of exercise. It’s not a bad gig.”

“How about the part where they’re forcing you to kill people and whore yourself out?” Sam demands. His chest is so tight it’s going to snap in a few moments, and he can’t tell if he’s more infuriated or depressed by Dean’s attitude.

“Who said anyone was forcing me to do anything?” Dean responds, but he still won’t meet Sam’s eyes.

Sam decides on anger—it’s easier—and snaps, “I saw them take you, Dean. There’s a tape. You didn’t look all that eager to sign up.”

That gets him a brief flick of his brother’s eyes and a smile about as real as Santa Claus. “Things change.”

“You’re full of crap.” Frustration is hot and sour in Sam’s mouth.

Dean’s lips thin and he finally— _finally_ —looks over at Sam. “Shouldn’t you be busy weeping over my grave?”

Sam’s breath rushes out like he’s been punched. Over the past few months, his concern for Dean has edged out his anger over what his brother put him through, but that one, casual question has brought it all back with an almost physical blow.

Dean cocks his head. “You know, it’s kind of embarrassing how easy it was to play you,” he muses. “Seriously, man: burned to death saving some old lady’s cat? Like I’d ever go out like that.”

“Fuck you, Dean.” Sam’s throat is so tight that the words rip his esophagus with their passage. His vision is filming over with something that feels suspiciously like tears, and his body thrums with the need to launch himself on top of Dean and beat those cocky, hateful words right out of him. Or maybe fuck him into submission: right now Sam isn’t sure which is more appealing.

He turns before he can do either and strides over to the door. Pauses with his hand on the doorknob as he remembers his jacket, and the cuff links, and the fact that it’d look pretty suspicious to walk in here with one face and leave with another.

Swearing under his breath, he turns around to retrieve the jacket. He half-expects Dean to say something else—apologize, prod him one last time, _something_ —as he stands just inside the suite jerking the jacket back on, but he doesn’t. When Sam gives his brother one final glance, Dean isn’t even looking at him. He’s lying on the couch with his head on one of the armrests and tossing a small, metal wolf figurine that was sitting on the coffee table from one hand to the other.

Sam clenches his jaw and storms into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. Hank instantly materializes from around the nearest corner.

“Think of something you wanted?”

“No, I’m leaving,” Sam answers shortly.

Hank’s bored expression slips into something eager. “Problem with the service?” he asks. It’s obvious that he’s hoping there was, and Sam’s eyes drop briefly to the man’s healing nose. He wonders what would happen to Dean if he said yes: if he gave them an excuse.

But as angry as he is with his brother, there’s no way in hell that Sam is going to get him in trouble with these sons of bitches. Somehow, he manages to shove all of his rage aside and drops his eyes a little. Flushes.

“Fine, um. It was, um … fine,” he says.

Hank brays laughter, although Sam figures that he’s capable of more tact than this or he’d be out of a job. Sam being Bela’s ‘boy toy’ apparently excludes him from the respect Hank normally gives the clientele.

“Too much for you to handle, huh, Harvard?”

What Sam would like to do is break the man’s nose for him again—maybe a finger or two for good measure. What he does is straighten his back, drop an arrogant mask over his face, and snap, “Just take me to the fucking car already.”

Still chuckling to himself, Hank offers him an ironic bow and snorts, “Right this way, _sir_.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Vincent’s driver drops Sam back at the Bellagio a little under an hour later, Bela is nowhere to be found. She must have stayed to talk with Vincent: probably didn’t expect Sam until the next morning. Sam drags a chair over by the front door and waits.

When she lets herself into their suite almost three hours later, he launches himself out of his seat and grabs her before she realizes that he’s there. Kicking the door shut, he shoves her up against it and wraps one hand around her throat.

“You _knew_ ,” he snarls. “You knew they were selling him and you didn’t tell me.”

Bela clutches at his hand, trying to pry his fingers free. Her eyes are wide: trembling with fear. For the first time since he met her, Sam thinks he’s seeing a genuine emotion.

“Did you fuck him?” he demands, shaking her a little. “Huh? Did you buy him like a goddamned wind-up toy?”

She shakes her head, slapping at his arm and trying to dig her nails in past the jacket he hasn’t bothered to take off. Sam just presses harder, cutting off her air as well as her voice.

“Every night,” he says, speaking slowly and clearly, “From now until we get him out, you’re going to buy him for me. I don’t care how much it costs, or how many strings you have to pull. No one else touches him. Do you hear me? _Do you?_ ”

Bela nods wildly, her face an alarming shade of purple, and Sam releases her. She slumps against the wall, gasping for breath, and looking faintly shocked. Sam isn’t sure by what. She had to know he wasn’t going to take that well.

Turning his back on her, he leaves her there. Stalks into his room and slams the door shut, pausing to lock Bela out. He doesn’t think she’ll chance his mood tonight, but he feels better with the extra barrier between them.

Sam moves toward the bed on shaking legs. He’s too tired to bother changing for bed, and then, once he’s lying down with his bowtie loosened and his shoes off, too keyed up to sleep.

As he stares at the ceiling, he thinks of Dean’s hollow eyes and empty smile. Thinks about the way his brother played him like a flute, same as he always has. Dean pushing Sam’s buttons and sending him away, just like Dean—for some obscure, twisted reason known only to him—wanted.

Well, fuck that. Sam’s through letting Dean manipulate him, and he sure as hell isn’t going to let Dean push him away ‘for his own good’.

He’s yanking his brother out of that hellhole whether Dean wants him to or not.


	10. Fire and Phone

With everything that happened the day before, Sam is sure that his dreams will be bloody when he finally falls asleep, and he isn’t wrong. He also assumes that they’ll feature Dean, though, and there he _is_ mistaken because the short, heavily muscled and bearded man squatting before the bonfire doesn’t resemble his brother at all.

The Norseman’s blond hair is matted: his beard and moustache long and untrimmed. Healing insect bites and scratches litter the man’s naked body, and scars—wounds from a knife or a sword, Sam thinks—shine oddly in the flickering light. It’s difficult to tell what color his eyes are in the red glare, but Sam guesses at blue.

Snow covers the ground beyond the ring of the fire’s warmth, and beyond that lies a void of darkness. No, not a void: there are eyes shining out from the black. They aren’t human eyes, not reflecting the light like that, but Sam can tell that they aren’t fox or wolf or raccoon eyes either. They’re too high up, ranging from four and a half to a little under six feet off the ground: the height of a grown man.

Sam’s pretty certain that Dean’s eyes would shine like that in the dark.

Tearing his gaze away from the ring of berserkers, he looks back at the man before the fire. Knowledge from countless hours spent searching for a cure nudges him and he knows that he’s about to witness the ritual he read so much about.

Is this real? Maybe. Probably. Sam can feel that part of his mind that brings him the visions thrumming like a car on neutral as it shows him this place: this when. How many years ago? How many miles distant?

 _Many,_ he answers himself. _Countless and many._

The Norseman throws back his head and shouts a long, guttural string of words into the night. Sam’s familiar with the ritual, so he knows that the man is invoking the nine worlds of the cosmos: calling on the spirits of Niflheim to witness his sacrifice. He has trouble actually follow the words, though. The man’s accent is too thick: too foreign. Then the berserkers surrounding the bonfire take up the chant in a rough cacophony, and Sam gives up even trying to decipher anything.

Into the pulse of the chanting comes a new sound: something far too like a child’s scream for Sam’s comfort, even if he knows better.

An older man with graying hair and a berserker’s shining eyes steps into the circle. He’s holding a rabbit by the nape of the neck, and it’s the rabbit’s screams that are rising above the chanting. It kicks its hind legs wildly, as though it can sense what’s coming, and it keeps making that maddening, horrifying noise.

The blond doesn’t look at all perturbed by the sound as he accepts the animal, though. He’s stopped speaking, although the berserkers continue to chant around him, and he waits for the older man to withdraw before resuming. With the rabbit’s addition, there’s a new note to the ritual: a low threat of violence lacing every syllable of the incantation.

Sam isn’t afraid or disgusted: there’s nothing cruel in the rising threat. Nothing vicious. This is nature at its purest: the red tooth and claw of the beast, the predator triumphant. There’s a primal grace and beauty in the way the firelight licks over the man’s naked body; even the harsh sounds of Old Norse have their own crude allure. The entire scene calls to some deeply buried part of Sam, drawing him closer even as his rational mind shrinks back from what he knows is coming next.

The dream _(vision)_ brings him close enough to see the fleas leaping free from the rabbit’s body as if they can sense their host’s approaching doom. He can see the scar half-concealed by the man’s beard, twisting down his jaw where an enemy’s axe caught him across the face. The fire’s heat beats at him, driving off the chill of this northern, cold place.

Sam’s focus is drawn by the rabbit’s kicking hind legs as they drag deep, red furrows in the blond man’s forearm. Demons enter and exit their victims through the mouth: Sam’s seen it happen more often than he’d like. Animal spirits, on the other hand, need an open wound: they go in through the blood and don’t come out again. Every version of the summoning ritual that Sam has seen has called for the caster to cut his own flesh in order to provide that entry-point, but the Norseman won’t need to: his sacrifice has done it for him.

 _This is the way it’s supposed to be,_ Sam thinks as the rabbit twists and digs its hind claws in deeper. _The bled and the bleeder._

He remembers, suddenly and with a sense of startlement, how Dean was infected. Cut open by the half-insane berserker before he turned around and opened the man in turn, killing him. And did some of the berserker’s blood end up in Dean’s mouth? Maybe in that first spurt of cast-off?

Sam thinks it did.

There weren’t any words in his brother’s case—no need to summon what was already there—but there was ritual just the same. Sam can feel destiny closing in around him like a noose. Fate laughing at him, inevitable and unavoidable, because Jesus, what are the chances of something like that happening? Moon and blood and wolf and Dean, all colliding together as if there’s a purpose to this disaster: as if something intended for this to happen.

Why? Why now and why Dean? Not for the Arena. Not for Vincent’s amusements. No, as impossible as it seems, there’s something larger at work here.

Sam is yanked from his thoughts as the rising chant comes to an abrupt halt. It’s silent in the circle of light as the Norseman lifts the rabbit to his mouth and bites down. There’s a spray of red and the rabbit’s feet thrum a violent, staccato beat. The man presses the rabbit more firmly against his face, his throat working as he swallows down the rush of blood from its savaged throat. When the rabbit’s feet have stilled and the flow of blood has stopped, he drops the limp body—blood soaking his beard and moustache and staining his lips—and growls out the final words of the invocation.

There’s a roar as the fire explodes outward, enveloping the man’s body. Sam expects him to be burnt, but when it withdraws the Norseman’s skin isn’t even reddened. His eyes are half-lidded in some ecstatic, ritualistic high, and he barely flinches as the fire sends a burst of flame out into the night. Kneeling, he lowers his head and is still. Waiting.

There’s a low murmur of conversation as the other berserkers withdraw and Sam wishes that he knew enough Old Norse to follow along. The few words he does catch are tantalizing because, unless Sam is interpreting incorrectly, these men seem to expect a long wait ahead for the blond Norseman. It doesn’t make any sense. Everything Sam has ever read about the ritual says that the summoning is all but instantaneous. This one has taken too long already, and the dispersing men seem to expect it to be a matter of not hours but _days_ before anything more can be expected.

Maybe this wasn’t a summoning rite after all? But it matched in every other respect, and the parts of the incantation that he could follow were identical to the rituals he’s read about.

The murmur of conversation has died down as the berserkers disappear into the distance, but a new sound has taken its place: a rushing, low noise like a stiff wind through the trees. Sam glances in the direction of the sound—sense of rising speed, and intent—and then tenses in alarm as a black whirlwind funnels into the firelight. There’s no mistaking that darkness for anything but a demon, and it forces itself down the Norseman’s throat before he’s even realized it’s there.

Sam watches the man’s eyes fill with black and grapples with the feeling that he’s witnessing something important: that his mind is showing him this for a reason. But there are too many missing pieces to the puzzle, and he’s too horrified by the way the demon slowly turns its new head to the side and looks straight at him. Looks through the intervening miles and years and sees _Sam_ there.

“You can’t save him,” it says. “There’s already blood on his hands.” It raises its own hands, splashed with rabbit’s blood, and grins to display reddened teeth.

“He would have been useful. Now he’s just going to be _fun_.” Its grin widens as it tilts its head at a discomforting angle. “We’re going to rip him apart and sow the earth with his blood, Sammy. Just like we destroyed his mongrel friends.”

Sam tries to speak and, in the way that dreams sometimes have, can’t. Frustrated and frightened, he gathers his will to try again and the dream slips around him. Time jags forward and deposits him in an elsewhere and when that can’t be far removed from the bonfire because the demon is still there, bloodied by rabbit’s blood and wearing the Norseman’s body.

The village the demon stands on the outskirts of is a crude thing: huts of twisted branches and small enclosures holding a few chickens and some hairy boars that might be the predecessors of pigs. There are a few wolves moving through the streets, and they pause as the demon steps forward among the first of the huts. Wrinkling their muzzles into snarls, they open their jaws to howl a warning.

Before the sound can leave their throats, the demon flicks its hand. There’s a sickening snap as the wolves’ heads jerk around and their bodies collapse heavily onto the snow-covered ground. The demon glances over its shoulder as if it can still see Sam there and offers him a glee-filled, mischievous smile before making its way into the first hut.

Sam is forced to follow, and although he tries, he can’t turn away from the slaughter that follows. The demon is methodical and silent, snapping necks or slitting throats with a dagger it picks up in the first hut, and it takes the tribe sleeping. Sam’s pretty sure that these are the same men and women who surrounded the bonfire, and he’s certain of it after the demon drags its stolen blade lovingly across the neck of the graying man who brought the rabbit.

Only once does it find a victim wakeful, and when the little boy raises his arms and utters a short, welcoming cry, Sam doesn’t have to speak the language to know that this is the son of the demon’s chosen host. There’s pride in the boy’s face, and curiosity as he asks a question. The demon smiles at him, reaches out as if to pull him into an embrace, and twists the boy’s head clean around to the back.

“The old ways are dead,” it says—perhaps speaking to Sam, perhaps just to itself—and then drops the body onto the packed dirt floor of the hut.

After, it burns the village, leaving the fire to take the increasingly frantic chickens and boars. As the demon stands just beyond the rising flames, it murmurs, “This is our world now. This is our meat.”

It turns its head, looking directly at Sam with fire reflected in its oiled gaze. “You tell your brother. Tell them both.”

Then it raises its hand—flash of light on the crude knife it’s been using, sheen of slick blood on the blade—and drags the knife across its own throat.

“Tell them what happens to mongrels,” it adds, voice wet and ruined. Then the man’s jaw drops wide and his throat ripples as the demon funnels free.

The Norseman has a few seconds to understand what happened, to feel the dripping mess of its throat, before the light goes out of his eyes and he falls to lie motionless in the snow. The dream should be done with Sam—nothing left alive between the demon and the fire and the suffocating smoke—but it holds him there until the fire has spread to the Norseman’s body and is charring his upturned, horror-filled face.

The demon’s words—its _promise_ —follow him into waking.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam sits up slowly, body weary and head aching as though he didn’t sleep at all. Running a hand through his hair, he fights and fails to get the images of last night’s slaughter out of his mind.

Jesus, that really happened. In some distant, frozen part of the world there are bones and the charred remnants of huts waiting to be stumbled across and dug up by an archaeologist. The complete destruction will doubtlessly be interpreted as an attack by a rival war party, and Sam isn’t sure that would be inappropriate.

With difficulty, he shifts his thoughts away from blood and fire and focuses on the demon’s words. Did it really speak to him, so many centuries ago? Could it see that far into the future? That queer, trapped feeling of fate returns, making him sweat.

Sam has never really believed in destiny, but between his realization about Dean’s meeting with the wolf and the demon’s words to him, he has to at least entertain the idea that fate is a real, solid thing. And for some reason it’s interested in Dean.

The thought that Dean’s life—and therefore his own life—has been written in stone since the beginning of time is more than a little unsettling. Easier to focus on other questions raised by the dream: questions that Bobby might be able to answer.

Reaching over, he snags his cell phone off the nightstand. He was planning on calling Bobby today anyway to fill him in on Dean’s situation, and eight fifteen is late enough that he’ll be up and three cups of coffee into his morning.

Sure enough, Bobby picks up on the second ring with an alert, “Sam? You find him?”

“Yeah,” Sam answers and then hesitates, wondering how much to say. How much he can bear to say.

“Thank God,” Bobby exhales in a low, fervent voice. “Is he okay?”

“He’s—” And that’s all that Sam can get out before choking on the weight of his own emotions. The nightmare of last night’s dream is replaced by his memories of his brother from the Arena: Dean standing in the suite again, eyes and face composed into an empty mask. Dean in the cage, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he crushed the life out of another human being at the whim of a bloodthirsty crowd.

Dean is so far from okay he isn’t even in the same hemisphere.

“Sam?” Bobby says, alarmed. “Talk to me, son.”

“He’s so fucked up,” Sam blurts. Swinging up to a sitting position on the edge of his bed, he drags a hand across his face. “The man who took him is making him fight in some underground ring. To the death. He killed three people last night alone and these bastards have had him for six months.”

“Jesus,” Bobby whispers.

“Bobby, they took the amulet.”

The silence on Bobby’s end of the line is deafening.

Sam swallows to get his throat working again and adds, “He’s still—he’s still in there, man. I don’t know how he’s managing it, but he is.”

“He can’t be,” Bobby says, but there’s an underlying tension to his voice that tells Sam that he wants— _badly_ wants—to believe.

“It’s him,” Sam insists. “I talked to him, and he’s still Dean.” He hesitates—he can barely bring himself to think about the other things Dean’s being forced to do, let alone put them into words—but then makes himself to say, “It might be better if he wasn’t.”

“I hate to sound cold, Sam, but your brother’s no stranger to killing.”

“I don’t mean that, I—” Sam squares his jaw and stares at the oil painting on his wall. Does his best to see the cascade of flowers reflected in the lake’s surface instead of hands on Dean’s skin. Dean’s mouth working on strangers’ flesh. Dean’s disengaged, dead eyes. His words come out in a disjointed jumble.

“They’re making him. With people. For money.”

Bobby’s quiet for a few moments and then he says, speaking carefully and slowly, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

Sam’s stomach gives an angry little twist. Damn Bobby to Hell, anyway. Damn him for making Sam say it. But his anger gives him the courage, finally, to open his mouth and lay it all out as bluntly as he can.

“They’re whoring him out,” he says, and although he thought Bobby was quiet before, that’s nothing to what he can hear over the line now. There isn’t even the faint whisper of Bobby’s breathing to tell him they’re still connected. He gives it a moment—more for his own well-being than for Bobby’s sake—and then prods, “Bobby? You there?”

“I—yeah, I’m here. _Jesus Christ_ , Sam.”

The rawness of Bobby’s voice shoves the painting from Sam’s eyes and replaces it with an image of Dean’s back, pale skin speckled with freckles and slick with sweat. Dean’s muscles clenching and twisting as he moves: Dean’s head dropping down with a low grunt as lacquered nails dig into his shoulder blade. Dean’s throat peppered with bite marks.

Anger, disgust, pity, sorrow and hatred snarl and bite at each other in Sam’s chest, and he fists his hand in the bed sheets in a vain attempt to focus on something physical. None of those emotions are crawling around in his stomach, though. No, that’s something wretched and low. Something with eyes as green as his brother’s.

People are using Dean— _hurting_ him—and Sam is jealous.

Somehow, he manages to open his mouth and say, “The place they’ve got him is like Fort Knox. We’re gonna need help getting him out.”

If he concentrates, he can loosen his grip on the sheets. Awkwardly, he gets up and stumbles into his bathroom. The glance he catches of himself in the mirror shows him sweat-damped, with limp hair and a suit that looks like he crumpled it up in a ball and shoved it into the bottom of his suitcase for a few weeks. Red, scratchy eyes.

Fuck, his head aches.

“‘We?’” Bobby says. His voice is sharp: only slightly softened by his gratitude at the change of subject. “You brought _Bela_ with you?”

Dropping his eyes from his reflection, Sam turns on the faucet and holds his hand beneath the cold water. “It’s more like she brought me.” He bows his head and drops a palmful over the back of his neck. Shudders at the shock.

“You can’t trust her, Sam,” Bobby warns. “She’s nothing more than a mercenary, and I know for a fact that you can’t afford her help with something like this.”

Sam utters a short laugh as he turns the water off again. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Whether it’s the water or the fact that they aren’t talking about his brother’s degradation any longer, he feels slightly more centered as he tells Bobby about the role Bela played in Dean’s abduction: about the working relationship she’s still maintaining with Vincent. He can’t talk about Bela without getting pissed off, of course, but anger is more welcome than the mess of emotions he was subjected to before. He paces as he talks, burning off some of the excess adrenaline, and feels the edges of his headache ease.

When Sam finishes filling him in a few minutes later, Bobby grunts darkly. “She’s after something.”

“I know,” Sam admits. “The Colt isn’t enough—not for her to ruin the set up she has with Vincent. But we don’t have much of a choice here: we need her help.”

Bobby sighs. “I know. I just don’t like it.”

“I don’t either,” Sam agrees, and glances at the closed door to his room. He wonders if Bela’s awake yet. Wonders if she’s pissed about last night or still frightened. Hopes for the later but isn’t counting on it.

“Well, I can be there by tonight if you want,” Bobby tells him. “Two sets of eyes are better than one, and like you said: you’re going to need help getting Dean out of there.”

Sam should have expected the offer, but it takes him by surprise. He’s managed to be fairly civil to Bobby on the phone, but he remembers what things were like between them in New York. He still hasn’t forgiven Bobby for lying to him, doesn’t know if he ever will, and he can’t afford to have that resentment distracting him right now. Dean needs him too much. Then again, Dean needs Bobby too.

Well, fuck.

Sam is silent long enough that Bobby clears his throat and continues, “Look, I know I’m not exactly your favorite person right now, but—”

“No,” Sam breaks in. “It’s fine. Thanks. Um. I won’t be able to meet up with you until tomorrow, though. I’ll be—I had Bela … buy … Dean. For me. So that he doesn’t have to—”

“Right,” Bobby interrupts Sam’s painful floundering. “Good. You tell him to hang on.” After a brief pause, he adds, “Tell him I’m ready to keep my promise.”

 _What promise?_ The question is on the tip of Sam’s tongue and then, with sharp clarity, he _knows_. There’s only one promise Bobby could have made Dean that Dean would be concerned with right now, and it’s one that Sam is never, not fucking _ever_ , going to let Bobby keep. Dean had no business asking Bobby to make that promise in the first place, damn it. He’s Sam’s, he’ll always be Sam’s, and who the fuck cares if he’s not quite human anymore?

Sam wants to tell Bobby to fuck off, it isn’t going to happen, Sam’ll kill Bobby first if he has to, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because it’ll be easier to keep Bobby from putting a bullet in Dean’s head if the man isn’t already on his guard.

“Will do,” Sam says in a voice that’s only a little strangled. Then, clearing his throat, he continues, “Hey, when you were researching for a way to get the wolf out of Dean, did you ever come across anything about berserkers and demons?”

“Berserkers and demons?” Bobby repeats, surprised. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“I saw part of a blog yesterday,” Sam lies without thinking. “The poster claimed there’s a long-standing animosity between berserkers and demons.”

“A blog, huh?” Bobby says.

His tone is dismissive: like most hunters of his generation, he’s never really latched on to the Internet as a viable source of information. He has technology-savvy contacts, of course—one of whom must have helped set up Dean's 'death'—but he prefers to find his hunts through newspapers and word of mouth and does his research almost exclusively in books.

“Well, I’ll take another look, but that sounds like a load of crap to me. They’re from two different mythological backgrounds, and legends tend to cluster that way for a reason.”

“Thanks for checking it out anyway, man. I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I’ll call you tomorrow morning and we can put our heads together. The sooner we get Dean out of there, the better.”

“Yeah,” Sam breathes. His chest tightens with longing as he imagines Dean behind the wheel of the Impala again, Dean with a slight tan and his eyes crinkled at the corners from smiling and Zeppelin blasting from the radio.

Then the image of Dean as he was last night intrudes, and Sam knows that it’ll be a long time before he gets that brother back. Even without the problem the wolf poses, Dean is so damned damaged. What he really needs is professional help—counseling—but it’ll be a cold day in hell before Dean will agree to something like that.

The full weight of responsibility crushes down on Sam and it's too much—he's only one person, he has his own demons to deal with, and he’s probably the least impartial person in the entire world when it comes to Dean. He struggles with it, fighting to keep his lungs filled and his heartbeat steady. He can't let himself think this way: can't handle everything in one, disastrous lump.

 _One thing at a time,_ he tells himself. _Get him out before you start panicking about fixing him._

Sam takes a deep, centering breath, and his thoughts obediently slow. Giving his head a shake, he says, “Thanks again.”

“You hang in there, Sam,” Bobby responds. “We’ll get him back.”

Sam holds onto the phone after he hangs up, turning it over in his hands and running his thumb over the smooth plastic. Then, with an abrupt movement, he tosses it onto the bed and heads into the shower. He does his best not to think of anything as he washes off the sweat from last night’s dream—nightmare, really. He succeeds in shaking off thoughts of blood and beetle carapace eyes, but Dean is another matter.

He can’t help imagining his brother undressing in front of some stranger, revealing scars that have no meaning for them: marks that are just a decoration, something to get a vicarious thrill over. Imagines a hungry mouth sucking at the shiny, puckered circle on Dean’s thigh where the ghost of a Confederate soldier ran him through with a bayonet—not rejoicing in the fact that Dean’s still here, that he made it through another crappy hunt, but worshipping the pain he went through: getting off on it.

 _No permanent damage,_ Sam remembers Hank saying, and Jesus Christ there’s so much grey area there that Sam has to lean his forehead against the wall until the urge to puke passes.

 _Don’t think about it,_ he tells himself fiercely, and digs around in his memory until he catches on the aftermath of a hunt. The memory is a little faded with the passage of time, but the fall of water around Sam’s shoulders brings it back clearly enough.

The kelpie went down hard, doing its best to take at least one of them with it, and when the hunt was over and the kelpie was dead at the bottom of the lake, he and Dean had ended up in the shower together. There wasn’t anything sexual about it—at ten Sam was too young and Dean was never wired that way to begin with—which makes it a sanctuary from the lurid images his masochistic mind keeps presenting him with.

That shared shower was an order from their father, Sam remembers. He’d been too woozy from being tossed headfirst onto the ground to be trusted in the bathroom on his own, but reeking too strongly of decaying flesh and wet horse for the shower to wait. John needed to go out and pick up some more supplies for their first aid kit, which left Dean playing nursemaid as usual. Dean wasn’t in great shape either—nursing bruised ribs and a sprained ankle—but he hadn’t argued beyond an annoyed roll of his eyes.

Sam remembers being a little nervous that Dean would be angry with him—it sucked when Dean got angry because he stopped talking to Sam almost completely—but once they were in the shower Dean wouldn’t shut up. Kept up a low, soothing patter while the water pounded into Sam’s skin: clean and so unlike the frigid, algae-choked lake. He talked about stupid crap—who’d win in a fight, Batman or John McClain; whether Dave Mustaine had played his best with Metallica or was better off in Megadeth; the chick in his sixth period English class who had let him feel her up in the girl’s locker room after school. Keeping Sam awake and with him.

Sam lets the memory of Dean’s voice wrap around him now and take the bitter jealousy and the guilt and the sorrow away. Feels the phantom-memory of Dean’s shoulder bumping his as Dean reached for the shampoo: Dean’s hand catching his arm when he lost his balance getting out and proved Dad right by almost cracking his head open on the bathroom floor.

By the time he finally climbs out of the shower, Sam is as calm as he’s going to get, and he lets go of the memory with a twinge of regret. Much as he wants to, he can’t hide himself in the past when Dean is hurting and needing him in the here and now. Some of the dark mood stirred up by both the dream and his talk with Bobby overtakes him again as he dresses—his own clothes rather than the uncomfortable suits Bela bought him yesterday—but they’re bearable.

Grabbing his cell phone off the bed and shoving it into his back pocket, Sam takes a deep breath and goes in search of Bela.


	11. One More Night

He finds Bela in the Conference Room, peering at a laptop with her face screwed up in a petulant expression.

“Damn it,” she mutters. Her voice is rough, and Sam sees without much surprise that her throat is bruised. He waits for the guilt to set in, but there’s only a little pulse of satisfaction.

“Problem?” he asks, coming into the room.

When Bela glances up at him, her eyes are wary but unafraid. Sam’s fairly certain that the gun sitting on the table next to her laptop has something to do with that.

“I’m having trouble locating the schematics,” she answers. “The contractors Vincent hired have all met with unfortunate accidents and their records have either been burnt to a crisp or lost.”

“That’s convenient,” Sam says, sitting down. Aware of his own hatred for Bela, he’s careful to leave a few chairs between them. Maybe with some distance, he’ll be able to restrain himself better.

Bela lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “I expected as much. What I didn’t expect was for my colleague to turn tail and cower at the mention of Vincent’s name. ‘Impenetrable system’ my ass.”

“By ‘colleague’ you mean ‘hacker’.”

“How very astute of you,” Bela says sarcastically, and then goes back to frowning at the laptop. Probably trying to come up with a suitably scathing response to her ‘colleague's’ refusal to help.

“I know someone who might be able to do it,” Sam suggests.

She looks up again, one eyebrow arched. “Really,” she says. Her tone suggests that she’d sooner believe Sam could pull a flock of winged monkeys out of his back pocket.

He could tell her where to shove her superior attitude, but it’d be a waste of time and words. Instead, he lifts up enough to get out his cell phone and then speed dials the Roadhouse. It won’t be open this time of day, but he’s called in the morning before and someone has always been there to pick up. Sure enough, after only three rings he’s greeted with a cheerful, “Hello?”

“Hey, Jo. It’s Sam. Sam Winchester?”

“Sam, hi.” Jo’s voice immediately dims with sympathy.

Sam’s confused by the change for the few seconds it takes him to remember that Dean is supposed to be dead. He could have called Ellen any number of times over the past six months and laid that particular lie to rest, but he never considered actually doing it.

Hunters as a whole aren’t a very forgiving group, and they don’t generally give supernatural creatures the benefit of the doubt. Telling people that Dean was still alive would have led to questions about why he’d fake his death in the first place, which would almost certainly have led to the wolf’s discovery. Sam had enough to worry about without a bunch of frightened hunters gunning for his brother.

Doesn’t mean he feels any better about lying, though, and Sam hasn’t talked to Jo since Dean’s ‘death’, which means she’s going to want to have the ‘so-sorry-for-your-loss’ conversation.

Fantastic.

“Listen,” he says quickly, hoping to cut her off at the pass. “I need to talk to Ash. Is he there?”

“Sure, hang on a sec.” There’s a rustle of cloth as Jo leans the phone against her shoulder and then her voice yelling, “Ash! Sam Winchester’s on the phone.” Then she’s back, talking with that soft, gentle voice that people use with the terminally ill. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine.” Sam shifts in his seat, tapping his thumb on the table. Bela’s eyes are a heavy weight on his skin, and the longer she looks the more it makes him itch. He’s beginning to understand why gorillas get so pissed off when people stare at them in zoos.

“Look, I’m sorry about Dean,” Jo offers.

Sam grunts noncommittally and switches the cell to his other ear.

“He was a really great guy,” Jo continues obliviously. “I mean, I didn’t really get a chance to know him, but he just seemed sort of, well, _good_ , you know?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, but what he thinks is, _You wanted to fuck him, you mean._ Almost immediately, his cheeks heat with a hot rush of shame. Sure, Jo had a crush on Dean, but what’s happening now isn’t her fault.

And Sam can’t fault her for wanting his brother. Jesus Christ, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

“I just wanted to say that if you wanted to talk I’m a good listener, okay?”

Resisting the urge to sigh, Sam makes himself smile—Jess used to say that you can hear it over the phone when someone smiles, and he believes her—and says, “I appreciate it, Jo, but I really am fine. And right now I need to talk to Ash. It’s important.”

“Oh, okay. He’s right here. Hang on.”

There’s a staticky noise of the cord being jostled as Jo passes off the phone and then Ash’s lazy drawl. “Dr. Badass at your service.”

Sam remembers Dean’s reaction to the small man—a mixture of bewilderment and grudging respect—and his smile shifts into something more genuine. “Ash, man. It’s Sam.”

“Winchester. SamnDean. Sure. I remember.” There’s another pause and then, belatedly: “Sorry about your brother.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam says, brushing past the condolence. “Anyway, I’m calling because I need a favor. I’m on a job and I need the floor plans of a building. I was hoping you could hack into the system and get them for me.”

“That’s kind of illegal,” Ash points out.

“And?”

“Just making sure you knew.”

“Does that mean you’re going to help?” Sam asks, sitting up a little.

“Sure. Dukes is a rerun tonight, so I was just going to drink until I passed out, and I did that yesterday, so … What’s the target?”

Sam considers pointing out that, at this point in time, _Dukes of Hazzard_ is always going to be a rerun, and then decides he’s better off leaving that one alone. He tilts the cell away from his mouth and meets Bela’s gaze. “He wants to know what the target is.”

“I think Vincent calls this particular branch Camargo Industries,” Bela answers. There’s a gleam in her eyes as she leans forward and props her chin up in her hand, as if he’s finally done something interesting.

Sam shifts his own gaze back to the far wall and relays the information. Ash lets out a low whistle.

“What?”

“Sorry, Sam, no can do. That’s, like, the Fort Knox of systems. No way anyone’s hacking that externally.”

Sam’s gut clenches—it’s useless, he’s failed Dean before they’ve even begun—and then Ash’s words penetrate. He tightens his hand on the phone. “Externally?”

“Well, it’s theoretically easier to hack from the inside. If I could access one of the internal servers, the rest’d be a piece of cake. Hrm. Hey, Jo! Do we have any cake?”

“Ash,” Sam calls. When there’s no response, he tries again, louder. “ _Ash!_ ”

“Yeah?”

“Can we do that?”

“Sure, if you can get inside. Place is supposed to be exclusive, though, and it’s got security up the ass.”

Sam eyes Bela, who gives him a flat, impatient smile in return, and says, “Getting inside isn’t going to be a problem.”

“Okay, then. I guess I could work up a rootkit for you.”

“A what?” Sam asks, shifting in his seat.

“Rootkit,” Ash repeats. “There’s a few different kinds, but with a system like that I’d go with an HVM. It’ll install a shim by inserting a hypervisor and supplant the loaded OS as host. Then the false kernel driver used to install the virtualization tech’ll automatically allocate a non-paged memory region and then delete itself, so all the installation, processes, logs, and ports I use’ll be undetectable.”

Sam always thought that he was decent with computers, but right now Ash might as well be speaking in Farsi. Rubbing his eyes, he says, “Okay, now I need you to pretend that I know nothing about computers and say that again.”

“Oh, sure. Uh. I can write a program for you to install on one of Camargo Industry’s computers. It’ll basically bypass all of the bigass firewalls they’ve got and give me remote control over the system. And then erase any evidence that it was ever installed, so that internal security sweeps don’t catch it.”

“You can do that?”

“Oh, sure.” Ash’s words are garbled by the sound of chewing. Either Jo found him a piece of cake or Ash just discovered one of the bowls of peanuts Ellen leaves on the bar. “You’ve gotta be a system administrator to install it, though.”

“Hang on a sec,” Sam says, and then holds the phone against his shoulder. “He says he can do it, but we’re going to need administrative access to the system.”

Bela rolls her eyes. “If I had _that_ , I wouldn’t need someone to do it for me, would I?” Then, before Sam’s heart has really had time to sink, her face stills and she says, “Wait. I think I can—it won’t be pleasant or easy, but I might be able to get to a terminal with that kind of capability. I’d only have a few minutes at best, though. Would that be long enough?”

Sam could try asking how she plans on getting to a computer, but she wouldn’t tell him and it isn’t worth forcing the information out of her. However sociopathic Bela is, she strikes him as competent, which means that her word is good enough. For now, anyway.

“How long does it take to install a rootkit, Ash?” he asks, half-certain that something that complex will take hours to upload.

“Few minutes,” Ash answers blandly.

Sam is so used to bad news that it takes his mind a few tries to understand what Ash is telling him. The relief that floods him isn’t as intense as what he felt last night when he saw Dean again for the first time in over a year, but it’s close.

“Okay,” he says, and has to clear his throat before he can continue. “Let’s do it. How long is it going to take you to write the program?”

“Do you know what kind of OS we’re working with?” Ash asks around another mouthful of whatever he’s snacking on.

Sam relays the question to Bela and then answers, “XL.”

“I’ve got something that’ll probably work, but I’m gonna want to tweak it first. Give me, oh, forty minutes, give or take a nacho. Man has his needs.” Ash smacks his lips together loudly and Sam is filled with the irrational urge to reach through the phone line and punch him for being so goddamned cavalier when Dean’s life is at stake. But Ash doesn’t know what this is for, and he isn’t—despite appearances—the type of guy to screw around when he has a job to do. If he were, Ellen would never let him stay at the Roadhouse.

“So, you want me to mail it to you?” Ash asks.

The thought of having to trust something this important to any postal system—to strangers—sends Sam into a minor panic. “No!” he blurts.

Bela twitches toward her gun and the movement is enough to sober Sam. He’s not going to get himself shot because he overreacted to an innocent question.

“No,” he repeats in a calmer voice, forcing his pounding heart to slow. “I’ll have Bobby Singer swing by and pick it up.”

That will mean that Bobby won’t be here until tomorrow morning, of course, but Sam wasn’t planning on meeting him until then, so it doesn’t matter much.

“Right on.” Ash sounds even more distracted than normal: probably already rewriting code in his head. “You wanna talk to Jo again?”

“No time,” Sam lies.

Until the rootkit is installed on one of the Arena’s computers and Ash gets them the information they need, he has nothing _but_ time: they can’t make any plans until they have the full picture. Just acknowledging his helplessness privately is enough to set his skin crawling again, and for a few seconds he feels as frustrated as he was in New York, waiting for a lead to drop into his lap. He’s having enough trouble keeping it together without having to fend off any more of Jo’s attempts at sympathy.

Clearing his throat, he says, “Thanks for doing this, Ash.”

“Anytime, _mi amigo_.”

Sam hangs up and drops his hand down on the table. “We’ll have the disc tomorrow morning,” he tells Bela, sliding his phone from one hand to the other across the polished wood.

“I can probably get it installed during tomorrow night’s fight,” she tells him.

Sam nods and makes himself stop playing shuffleboard with his phone before he drives himself nuts. “How are we going to be set for information if Ash manages to hack the system?”

“Floor plans and security layout at the least,” Bela answers. “There may also be a roster of personnel, maybe even a shift schedule if we’re lucky.” At the creak of her chair, Sam glances over and finds her leaning back with a deceptively lazy expression. “Bobby Singer’s coming?” she asks.

Oh right. He hasn’t had a chance to tell her yet. “Yeah, I called him this morning to tell him about Dean. He wants to help.”

Sam expects Bela to complain about his high-handedness in bringing Bobby in without consulting her first, but she only says, “He’s a good man to have in a tight spot. Is there anyone else you want in on the job?”

Sam considers it for a few moments, but really there’s only one answer he can give. Everyone that he knows well enough to ask for this kind of favor is dead: victims of Meg’s killing spree last year. There’s Ellen, who’s a hard ass if he ever met one, but Sam isn’t sure that she actually hunts, and then there’s Jo to consider. They may not have the specs for the Arena yet, but Sam’s seen enough to know that any rescue attempt is going to be risky as hell.

“No,” he says finally.

Bela nods. “All right. I’ve got some people I can call.”

“Mercenaries?” Sam asks. He tries to keep his voice neutral, but from the way that Bela’s eyebrow arches, he fails miserably.

“Better: fanatics.” Her lips twist wryly around the word, as though she’s amused that anyone could be devoted enough to an idea to merit the name. “They’re cheaper and they’ll throw themselves into the line of fire for the right cause.”

“Fan—oh yeah, that’s a great idea!” Sam’s voice is rising—riding the edge of incredulous and angry—but he isn’t in the mood to restrain himself. “A couple of suicide bombers is exactly what we need right now.”

Bela regards him with a superior expression that she has to have practiced in the mirror. “Since you don’t have any more warm bodies to contribute, you’ll have to make do with what I can provide. We’re going to need at least four. Besides, the men I have in mind are dedicated and incredibly skilled, with the added benefit of being disposable.”

It takes Sam a moment to work through what she means by ‘disposable’ and then he accuses, “You’re actually planning of using them that way, aren’t you? You’re just going to throw them at Vincent and—and what, _distract_ him?”

Bela laughs, all casual ease. “You know very well that we can’t make any sort of plan without more information.”

Frowning, Sam twists his chair so that he’s facing her directly and leans forward. “Nothing specific, no, but I’m not wrong, am I? You’re planning on sending them to their deaths.”

Maybe it’s his body language. Maybe it’s the accusation in his tone. Whatever the reason, Bela’s carefree mask slips and Sam is left looking at someone with sharp, glassy eyes and a hard set to her mouth. Sam read somewhere that windows are the eyes to the soul, but you couldn’t prove it by Bela.

“Do you want your brother back or not?” she demands.

“That isn’t the poin—”

“That’s _exactly_ the point,” Bela interrupts. Color is high in her cheeks: shame or anger. Sam’s betting on anger. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the Arena is basically a vault designed to hold your brother.”

Sam isn’t sure he’d go that far: it would have taken three or four _years_ to plan and build something like the Arena, and there’s no way Vincent was stalking Dean that long. But whether the man intended it from the beginning or not, it’s obvious that Bela is right about what the Arena has become: a multi-million dollar lock box and showcase for Vincent’s prize acquisition.

“Vincent wants to keep Dean as badly as you want him back,” Bela continues, “So if you want this rescue attempt to have _any_ chance of working, you’re going to have to get off that high horse of yours and wallow in the mud a bit with the rest of us.”

 _Get off yours and I’ll get off mine,_ Sam thinks, but he bites the words back. Arguing with Bela over just who’s being superior here, while gratifying, won’t help Dean. He can’t let what she said about Dean slide, though: can’t let her diminish his need for his brother like that.

“There is no way in hell that son of a bitch wants Dean more than I need him,” he says.

Bela shakes her head with a disbelieving scoff. “Do you know how much money he’s made over the last six months? Do you have the vaguest idea?”

Actually, Sam doesn’t. From the breadcrumbs Bela has dropped, he knows that the man spent a little over half a million ‘acquiring’ Dean in the first place—between the drugs and hiring the sniper and Bela’s fee—and it can’t be cheap to operate something as complex as the Arena. Or the mirror sites in London and Morocco and God only knows where else. That has to take a chunk out of Vincent’s net profits.

“Two million?” he hazards.

Bela offers him a smile that doesn’t reach her flat eyes. “Triple that and you still won’t be close. Dean is Vincent’s goose, and he’s going to keep laying golden eggs for a long, long time.”

Something in what Bela’s saying nags at Sam, making him frown. He turns her words over in his head and, after a moment, remembers. “You said that before.”

Bela goes still, her righteous anger disappearing behind a mask of caution. “What?”

“You said it last night—that Dean was going to be there a long time. I thought you meant Vincent wasn’t going to let him die in any of his matches, but that isn’t it, is it? You were talking about something else.”

Bela cuts her eyes away from him and rises. Shutting her laptop, she says brusquely, “I have some things I need to do.”

“You can tell me now or I can make you tell me later,” Sam says. His voice is soft, but there’s enough of a threat underlining the words that Bela’s hand twitches toward the gun again. There’s a cornered set to her shoulders, though, and Sam’s suspicion has cleared his mind enough that he knows he’s in no real danger. Not from her.

He laughs and it isn’t a particularly nice sound. “You aren’t going to kill me, Bela. You need me. Just like I need you.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t shoot you,” Bela points out, lifting the gun and turning it in his direction.

Sam’s pulse speeds a little at the sight, but that’s just instinct. The newfound surety inside of his chest that she’s never going to pull the trigger doesn’t waver.

“You won’t,” he says, pushing his chair back and swinging his legs up on the table. “Because then you’d have to explain to Vincent why you put a bullet in your latest boy toy. That’d be a little difficult, don’t you think?”

“You can’t hurt me either,” Bela says, but the gun is wavering in her hands now, and Sam can tell that she sees something on his face that she doesn’t like. He offers her a wide grin.

“Sure I can. You think Vincent would buy it if I told him you liked it rough? I think he would. I think he’d eat it up, and you know why? Because you already used that excuse to explain the bruises on your wrist. And you were planning on using it again today.”

She flushes at that, and her bruised throat works as she swallows.

Sam tries to tell himself that he isn’t enjoying this, but he can’t quite manage the lie. Leaning back further in his chair, he folds his hands in his lap. “Now, what do you know about my brother that I don’t?”

Taking refuge behind the scorn she’s so well practiced at, Bela says, “Believe me when I say that would take far too much time to answer.”

“Fine. What did you mean when you said he’d be there for a long time?”

She's silent long enough that Sam is considering making good on his threat, mulling it over in his head without the faintest tremor of unease or remorse, and then she says, “It’s a side effect of the bonding. Animal spirits are immortal, and now that it’s part of your brother that trait has … altered him.”

“Dean’s immortal?” Sam says skeptically. If Bela thinks he’s gonna buy that one, she’s even more arrogant than he thought she was.

“Not precisely.” Bela lowers the gun—either her arm got tired or she finally realized how ridiculous she looked, standing there and pointing it at him. “Dean has gained part of the wolf’s immortality, but the reverse is also true.” She pauses, lets out a low exhale, and then says, “In essence, the bonding slows down the aging process.”

Suddenly, Sam isn’t so sure she’s lying. “By how much?”

“I’m not certain. The oldest berserker mentioned in Tyr’s Bible was four hundred and eighty when he died. But then again, he was almost sixty when he first bonded. I’d guess that your brother has at least a thousand years ahead of him. Probably more.”

Sam’s stomach drops so abruptly that he grabs the table in a reflexive attempt to halt the fall his body isn’t actually taking. His feet slip from the table and hit the floor hard. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers.

Bela lowers herself back into her seat and sets the gun on the table. Her face is earnest when she asks, “Do you really want to leave him in Vincent’s hands for that long? In a few centuries, he won’t even remember your name. He won’t know anything but killing and fucking.”

Sam can’t quite hide his flinch at the bluntness of her words. Dropping his eyes, he clears his throat and then says, “Vincent’s human. He’s not gonna be around that long.”

“No, he won’t,” Bela agrees. “But he _does_ have children, Sam. And one day they’ll grow up and have children of their own and your brother will be nothing but an itemized entry on the list of Camargo Industry’s assets. A living, money-making heirloom that Vincent can pass down to all of his descendants.”

For a moment, Sam can see it in his head so clearly that he isn’t sure it’s not a vision: a future so far away that the world isn’t recognizable any longer, everything that Dean knew ground down to dust. Cyborgs for Dean to fight instead of normal humans, sometimes pure machines built for no other purpose than to give the Fenrir a good work out: bullet-fast anti-gravity balls with blades and a hunger for Dean’s blood. And an endless parade of sweat-soaked nights: Dean’s body sold to the highest bidder, traded for favors.

Bela’s right. After being treated like an animal not just for years but for _centuries_ , Dean won’t remember his own name, let alone Sam’s. He’ll just be the Fenrir. As mindless and obedient as a dog.

“It’s not going to happen.” The words scrape out through Sam’s dry lips. They sound hollow.

They sound like a lie.

“It will if you don’t decide to step up to the plate,” Bela snaps.

Sam’s chest aches with a savage mixture of anger and despair and guilt and something else _(colder)_ that he can only call determination, although that isn’t a strong enough word for it. The truth of the matter is that he would have sacrificed the men Bela wants to bring in even before he knew about Dean’s extended life span. He would have done it and not lost any sleep over it afterward. He only argued out of habit, and an obscure desire to needle Bela the way she’s bent on needling him.

But now Bela has stripped away the last, lingering threads of morality—or maybe it was only the _illusion_ of morality—that Sam was clinging to.

After a moment, he raises his head and says, “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one,” Bela responds with a slight, satisfied smile. Standing, she tucks the gun away at the small of her back. “I have a business meeting with Vincent this afternoon. While I’m out, I want you to head down to the casino. Maybe do a little sight-seeing.”

Sam flexes his fingers. There’s no blood there: no deaths over his head. But for the first time he’s certain that there will be—not precisely _innocents_ , but people who have at least never done him or Dean any harm.

He doesn’t care.

“Sam.”

“I’m not in the mood,” he grunts.

“I don’t particularly care,” Bela shoots back. “We did well last night, but Vincent’s still going to be watching you.” Her mouth twists. “He doesn’t trust me.”

How wise of Vincent. Sam himself would sooner trust a demon’s word than Bela’s. Demons lie, but at least when they make a deal, they stick to it. Sam can’t shake the feeling that Bela is just waiting for the right moment to sink a knife in his back.

Shoulder blades itching, he leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “Then why wouldn’t he be watching _you_?”

“He will be. I’m meeting with him, remember? But while I’m doing that, I need _you_ to be very visibly enjoying yourself. You’re free to entertain yourself however you want, just as long as you act the spoiled rich boy while you’re doing it.”

Reaching down to the chair beside the one she was using, Bela retrieves her purse. She puts it on the table and digs around in it for a moment. When she comes up again, she’s holding a thin leather wallet. She opens the wallet and pulls out what looks like a credit card. When she hands it to Sam, he sees that it has the Bellagio’s name in the place he expected to find _Visa_ or _American Express_.

“There’s a five thousand dollar credit,” Bela says. “If you decide to try your hand at the tables, do try not to lose it all in one place: it’s going to have to last you until we make our move.”

“Fine,” Sam says, turning the piece of plastic over in his hands. Five thousand dollars. It isn’t three percent of what Vincent paid Bela for Dean.

“And put something suitable on before you go out,” Bela adds, raking her eyes over Sam’s t-shirt and jeans. “Pretty as you are, I didn’t buy those clothes for my own amusement.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Turns out high stakes poker isn’t much different from the poker he and Dean used to play when they needed some fast cash. Playing for five hundred dollars a hand takes some getting used to at first, but Sam quickly settles into it. When he returns to the suite around five o’clock, he’s actually managed to add to his expense account.

And the gambling turned out to be fairly good distraction from his rising nerves. From thoughts about Dean fighting again tonight: about seeing him afterwards. About the things that he wants to say to his brother, and God, Sam doesn’t even know where to start.

Bela isn’t in the suite when he lets himself in, but the note she taped to Sam’s door is pretty difficult to miss. He stands there staring at it for a long moment, numb and uncomprehending. His hand shakes as he finally reaches out and takes it down. He heads over to the bar with the shuffling gait of an old man and drops into one of the seats. Sits there with his fingers trembling and reads the note again.

 

 _I’ve arranged for the rest of the week, but Dean’s appointment for tonight refuses to cancel. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take your frustration out on me: I can’t work miracles._

 _I already told Vincent you wouldn’t be joining us tonight, so don’t bother showing up. You’ll only upset yourself and make him more suspicious. We still have appearances to keep up, of course, so I left you tickets for several of the better shows this evening. They’re at the front desk under Simon Carver._

 _Use one._

 __

Bela

 _P.S. I’m serious, Sam. Don’t fuck this up over one more night._

 

Sam crumples the paper in one fist and puts his head down on the bar. The wood is cool against his feverish skin. When he closes his eyes, all he can see is Dean on his back with a blurred, androgynous body on top of him. Dean himself is in sharp focus, eyes tightly closed and face turned to one side in mingled disgust and shame.

“Goddamn it,” Sam whispers, and then he’s crying: great, helpless sobs that leave him gasping for breath. After a few minutes, he stumbles to his bathroom and kneels in front of the toilet. Hangs onto the lid and watches everything he ate today come up again.

Although he attends one of Bela’s shows, as Sam rides the elevator back up to the suite later that night, he realizes that he didn’t actually see anything but his brother. Didn’t hear anything but Dean’s voice: Dean doing something he’d never actually do in real life.

Dean begging Sam to help him, to get him out of there, to put a bullet in his head if there’s no other way.

“Never,” Sam whispers, but he knows that if it comes down to it—if their escape attempt goes FUBAR—that his last act on this earth will be to put his brother where no one can hurt him ever again.


	12. Friends and Enemies

Bela doesn’t return to the suite until four in the morning. Sam knows because he’s still awake, locked in his room and staring at the painting of the flower-fringed lake on his wall. His chest hurts too much for him to fall asleep, and his mind won’t stop tormenting him. He keeps wondering what Dean’s doing now: what’s being done to him.

Sam expects Bela to go straight to her own room on the other side of the suite when she gets in, but instead there’s a soft knock at his door. “Sam?” she calls, voice surprisingly gentle. He doesn’t answer, and after a few moments she says, “It’s over,” and then moves away again.

Sam’s chest gives a particularly sharp pulse and he curls in on himself. He thinks for a moment that he might start crying again, but he seems to be too exhausted for that. _It’s over,_ he tells himself, and, _He never has to go through that again._ Eventually, the ache in his chest eases and leaves him to take comfort in his unwavering determination.

By all rights, he should be exhausted, but instead he feels more alert than ever. Feels almost wired. If it was even a couple of hours later, he’d give Bobby a call—set up a place to meet and get it over with—but Bobby’s plane probably hasn’t even left the ground yet.

In the end, muscles thrumming with excess energy, Sam gets out of bed and pushes all the furniture against the walls. Most of their training when they were growing up was done outside where there was plenty of room to move, but John made sure that almost all of his PT drills could be adapted to a smaller area. Storms—rain, or snow, or a wretched mixture of both—might prevent them from using the yard of the crap apartment they were renting or the parking lot of the motel, but it wasn’t allowed to interfere with training. Sam’s never been thankful for that before, but it gives him something to do now.

As he slips from a roundhouse kick into a series of punches _(right hook, left hook, right again, uppercut)_ , he remembers sparring with Dean in a series of motel rooms: one of the beds shoved up against the wall with the other flipped upside down and piled on top of it: bureau and chair and desk shoved either on top of the beds or wedged into the bathroom. In the memory his mind finally settles on while he retrieves his knife from his bag and moves on to a second set of drills, Dean is twenty-one—no, twenty, because Sam was only sixteen then, and it was high summer.

He thinks it was only a few weeks after Dean’s Not Funny leech joke because he was more distracted than usual. Irritable for reasons he wouldn’t admit to himself then, but which, in retrospect, feel very much like a freak-out. It isn’t every day that you go skinny-dipping with your brother and come out of the experience with a hard on and a fascination with ginkgo leaves.

It was that constellation that set him off, Sam remembers as he moves the knife in effortless patterns, letting muscle-memory take over as his mind drifts. Dean was shirtless—on a day that wasn’t as sweltering as the one that prompted the swimming expedition but was still hot enough to make this kind of exertion near-ludicrous, they both were—and as the session went on and all of that pale skin was more and more slicked with sweat, Sam had a harder time concentrating on anything but the bunch and flex of his brother’s muscles.

Dean’s sudden dive forward took him by surprise, and the belated and off-target punch Sam sent at him went harmlessly over his brother’s head as Dean brought them both crashing to the floor. Forcing his own head back into the game, Sam hooked his leg around his brother and flipped them. It would have worked if Dean hadn’t been ready for him and added his own momentum to the throw.

They rolled over all right, and then _kept_ rolling until Sam fetched up against the leg of the bed with a grunt. Dean scrambled over him, pinning Sam to the skuzzy rug with his body and pressing his forearm against Sam’s neck.

Then, leaning back with his hair dripping sweat and his face flushed, Dean gave him a grin and said, ‘That all you got, Sammy?’

As he stared up at his brother’s beautiful, laughing face, Sam was overcome with a rush of anger _(_ because I wanted to kiss him, _Sam thinks as he spins, flipping the knife in his hand and adjusting for an outward slash of the blade)_. He bucked his hips up to flip them the other way, and this time when they rolled, Dean landed solidly on his back. Sam was a little slow in following—hadn’t expected his brother to go over that easily—and when he tried to clamber into a hold position Dean reached up with an arm and a leg and yanked Sam’s body close to his.

Sam struggled and Dean’s other leg came up, both of them hooking at Sam’s lower back and pressing him down. Dean’s arm slung around his neck, constricting, and Sam found his cheek sliding against his brother’s chest.

It was a little gross, all that sweat: Sam’s hair squeezed against the back of his neck in wet clumps that felt cold in comparison to the heat of Dean’s body, Sam’s cheek rubbing slick against his brother’s skin. But Dean’s musk was all around him, Dean’s sweat rubbing over his lips a little and getting on Sam’s tongue as he panted for breath. Dean tasted salty, of course, but underneath that there was something sweeter: something that made Sam think of almonds.

That ginkgo splatter of freckles was right in front of his eyes: all he needed to do was twist his head sideways _(he could manage at least that in Dean’s grip)_ and he’d be able to press his mouth against it. As he stared at that mesmerizing spot, Sam realized with something like horror that he was hard. He was hard and his crotch was pressed against his brother’s firmly enough that he had only a few seconds before Dean noticed.

 _It’s adrenaline,_ he thought desperately, _I’m sixteen and horny for anything that moves and it’s not my fault._

Sam in the now knows that this was only partly true: his erection wasn’t caused by a random rush of adolescent hormones, and it _was_ his fault—or was a fault that lay within him, anyway. But part of the responsibility lay with Dean as well: Dean pulling him close, Dean underneath Sam and drawing him down between his legs in a position that would have given anything with a pulse ideas. Dean, completely oblivious to the effect he was having for all of ten, mortifying seconds.

Sam felt his brother recognize the hard line pressing against him. Felt Dean still, felt his breath stutter, heard his heartbeat quicken where his ear was pressed to Dean’s chest.

 _Oh God._

‘Let go,’ Sam blurted, shoving at his brother’s sweaty skin, and Dean obeyed. Freed, Sam hurled himself up and away and was at the bathroom doorway before he realized that he couldn’t escape that way: the tiny room was filled to the brim with an armchair and a small desk. He spun around, meaning to run out of the room, away from the _(wrongbadsick)_ weight of his brother’s eyes, and Dean was there.

Sam let out a choked noise and tried to backpedal—he’d climb over the furniture and out the bedroom window to get away if he had to—and Dean caught his arm. Sam’s pulse jumped at the touch in something that wasn’t precisely fear.

‘Hey, calm down, man. It’s okay.’

‘Let me go!’ Sam shouted, trying to pull away. ‘It doesn’t—it’s just something that happens, it doesn’t mean—‘

Except it did. Much as he refused to believe it then, it _did_ mean.

Dean tightened his grip on Sam’s arm. ‘Woah,’ he said. ‘I know that, Sammy. It’s cool, okay? You’re right. It happens.’

Sam quieted—or at least stopped trying to pull away—and Dean grinned.

‘Bout five years ago, I was doing some hand to hand work with Pastor Jim,’ he said, and then shook his head, letting out a laugh. ‘Man, I don’t know which of us was more embarrassed.’

Sam’s heart was still trembling in his chest, and although he would have bet on _himself_ for most embarrassed—the Problem was only getting worse as he stood there looking at his brother’s smiling face, Dean’s competent fingers curled around his bicep—he managed a shaky laugh and said, ‘Dude, _Pastor Jim?_ ’

Dean shrugged, finally letting him go. ‘Told you: doesn’t mean anything. Except that we really need to get you laid.’ His grin turned into a smirk and he added, ‘At least you picked someone blindingly hot to pop a woody on. Shows you’ve got taste.’

‘Jerk,’ Sam muttered.

‘Bitch,’ Dean answered absently. He rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Ugh, man, I’m soaked. Come on, let’s get that crap out of the bathroom so I can take a shower.’

That was the end of that conversation, and Dean seemed to forget the incident ever happened.

Except he hadn’t forgotten, Sam realizes. The knife is a distant weight in a hand that seems to belong to someone else. All of Sam’s attention is focused on turning over his memories of the weeks and months after that incident.

At the time, he was too busy educating himself in the great Winchester traditions of Bury and Repress to notice much of anything, but he can see it clearly from his current vantage point. Sees the way that all of Dean’s casual nudity stopped: the way Dean became reluctant to close for a grapple when they sparred. Dad gave Dean shit for that a hundred times if he did it once, but Dean kept on claiming that he couldn’t manage to get past Sam’s freaky reach.

And Dean started bringing girls home.

He’d been making the rounds before, of course, but he was always careful to take his conquests somewhere else: park or car or the girl’s place. After that sparring session, though, Sam was as likely to come home to Dean making out on the couch or kissing a girl against the wall outside their motel room as he was to come back and find his brother elbow-deep in oil and grease.

 _He knew,_ Sam thinks and his mouth drops open a little. Dean looked at him—looked _into_ him—and saw what Sam wouldn’t let himself see. Even if Dean hadn’t known for sure, he’d at least _suspected_ , and strongly enough that he took countless verbal beatings from John in order to avoid another awkward situation.

After a few minutes, Sam gets a grip on himself and downgrades his panic into faint dismay. He feels disappointed as well—not by the fact that this realization has killed the sliver of irrational hope he was nursing that Dean might feel the same way, but by the lack of trust implied by his brother’s behavior. Dean was acting like he was worried Sam was going to try something: would take advantage of their closeness to grope him or get his rocks off somehow, and God, how could Dean _ever_ think Sam would use him like that?

Sam slowly heads over and sits down on the bed. He sets the knife down beside him and blinks at nothing in particular as he sends his mind forward a few years. The disappointment doesn’t fade as he sorts through his memories of the days after Stanford, but the nervous tension in his stomach eases. Dean knows _(maybe)_ about Sam’s sickness, but he also thinks that Sam is over it.

Maybe it was Jessica, maybe it was all those years apart, maybe Dean was too busy with the wolf to worry about Sam’s intentions anymore. Whatever the reason, after Stanford all of Dean’s caution was gone. He strolled around half-dressed and slept without a shirt on. He got in Sam’s face when they were sparring, using his speed to get past Sam’s reach and then pressing their bodies together in furious grapples. He didn’t try to hide his hook ups, but he didn’t parade them in front of Sam either.

 _So what does that mean?_ Sam asks himself, _What am I supposed to do with this?_

The answer, not surprisingly, is nothing. For now, they have enough to deal with. He and Dean are going to have to talk—now that he’s come to terms with the fact that he wants his brother, Sam’s not going to be able to hide it and he doesn’t want to wait for Dean to figure it out on his own again—but they won’t do it now. Sam isn’t springing something like this on his brother until Dean’s ready to handle it: until the damage that Vincent did is healed. Until then, Sam is just going to have to shove that deviant, hungry part of himself to one side.

Shouldn’t be difficult. After all, he’s been doing it most of his life.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam would have opted for a public meeting with Bobby—the better to temper his own volatile reactions to the man—but Bela nixed that idea. ‘They know what he looks like, Sam,’ she pointed out when he made the suggestion. ‘It’ll look a tad suspicious if you go for a drink with the one man they’re expecting to come looking for Dean.’

‘ _One_ man?’ Sam echoed.

Bela rolled her eyes with exaggerated annoyance. ‘You thought he was dead, remember?’ she pointed out.

‘At first, yeah, but—Vincent must have been watching Bobby. If he was worried he’d come looking, he would have put some kind of surveillance on him. He would have seen me show up and—’

‘But he wasn’t worried,’ Bela interrupted. ‘Sam, Vincent _knew_ no one would be able to find Dean on their own. If you hadn’t come to me, you’d still be wandering around New York like a lost lamb, wouldn’t you?’

As much as that reminder of his dependence on her stung, Sam had to admit she was right.

Which is why he’s pacing the foyer of the Presidential Suite, waiting for Bobby to show up on their doorstep with a tray and a waiter’s uniform. As he comes around the edge of the fountain for what must be the fiftieth time, he glances at Bela and pauses. She’s sitting at the dining room table and thumbing through a dog-eared copy of _Haraldskvæði_ : the earliest known reference to berserkers in modern literature. Only Tyr’s Bible outdates it, and Bela’s read that as well.

“What else should I know?” he asks abruptly.

Distracted, she glances up at him. “Hmm?”

“What else did you read in Tyr’s Bible?” Sam clarifies, taking a few steps closer so they aren’t shouting across the room. “About berserkers?”

“It’s a long book, Sam,” Bela says dismissively and goes back to reading.

Sam’s not ready to let this go, though. Between the upcoming meeting with Bobby and his realization about Dean this morning, he feels like he’s going to come out of his skin and he needs to do something proactive to distract himself. Here he is, shut in with a woman who may be the only person alive who knows more about berserkers than him and Bobby. He’d have to be an idiot to ignore this opportunity.

“Was there something about demons?” he prods, and Bela jerks so hard that she tears out a page from the book in front of her. The look she shoots him is venomous, and Sam isn’t sure whether she’s angry about her book or pissed she gave herself away. “What did it say?”

Bela stares at him for a long moment and then says, “Nothing pertinent.”

“Humor me.” It comes out as a threat, which is good because that’s what it is supposed to be.

One of Bela’s hands flutters up to her throat and then down again. With her lips compressed like she just swallowed something bitter, she shuts her book and says, “Define ‘spirit’.”

“A ghost,” Sam answers, and then frowns as he remembers that the wolf inside of Dean is, technically, also a spirit. “Wait.” After a moment to gather his thoughts, he says, “A spirit in an incorporeal entity.”

Bela’s lips twitch up at the corner. “Good boy. Going by that definition, Tyr’s Bible names four types. Spirits of the dead—ghosts—spirits of the beast—like Dean’s wolf—spirits of the light—what monotheists around the world would like to call ‘angels’—and spirits of the dark.”

“Demons,” Sam says, and Bela nods.

“Demons. Ghosts, as I’m sure you’re aware, are mostly mindless. Plenty of emotion, but no intellect behind it. And they tend to be a tad obsessive.”

She’s right. Ghosts are a step up from death echoes—they have at least a rudimentary capacity for thought—but it isn’t a very large step. Sam has seen hundreds of them, and they’ve been violent or kind or just plain pathetic, but always focused exclusively on one thing: ‘I need revenge on my husband’, or ‘I need to see my wife again’. Or Sam’s particular favorite: ‘I need to continue my psychotic experiments on the mentally insane’.

They aren’t _people_ anymore, they’re just loops of emotion that can’t think beyond their own urges. Once in a while you’ll get an exception to the rule, of course, but it’s always with newer ghosts. It takes time, occasionally, for that last, lingering trace of cognizance to fade away. But it always happens because, in the end, that’s just the way that ghosts are.

“The three remaining types don’t get along well. I think you’re familiar with the war between Light and Dark, so I won’t bother with the details on how that ball got rolling. Suffice it to say that, soon after the war began, it became obvious to both sides that they were in what amounted to a stalemate. And there was only one race that seemed to have the necessary power and intellect to break it.”

Bela inclines her head at the flash of understanding in Sam’s eyes.

“Yes, the spirits of the beast. Humans were far too weak to be of any importance and ghosts … well, you could bring a pack of rabid dogs into battle, but there’d be no telling which army they’d turn on, would there? So they sent delegates to the beast spirits and asked for an alliance.”

“And they sided with the angels?” Sam guesses, thinking of his dream: of the pure _hate_ choking the demon’s voice.

“They said no to both sides, Sam,” Bela corrects him wryly. “They’re not made for war. Beast spirits are intelligent, but they’re also creatures of instinct: they don’t understand right or wrong, light or dark. All they know is the thrill of the kill and the heat of a good mating.”

“The Light—the angels—accepted that decision. The demons didn’t. They took their retribution in a slaughter that would have washed the earth in blood if there’d been any actual blood to shed. They killed the beasts by the millions, and in the end they succeeded in teaching them what war was.”

“When the beasts turned to the angels for help, however, they received no reply—the text is a little fuzzy as to the reason, but I’d guess it’s because the high and mighty were pissed off that they’d been turned down before and decided to be petty.”

Sam’s not sure he cares for her interpretation of events—the angels that Sam has spent his life believing in are anything but _petty_ —but he isn’t going to engage Bela, of all people, in a theological discussion. “They came to us,” he says.

“They did,” Bela agrees, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. “The first beast spirit—a wolf, in fact—came to a man named Tyr and bonded with him. And neither of them, I think, were truly ready for the result.”

“Which was what?”

“Something very like your brother.”

“He’s different from the other berserkers I’ve seen,” Sam says, trying to work it through in his head for what feels like the thousandth time since Dean told him by the side of the road. “He’s stronger, and faster, and the wolf healed him once, which I’ve never even heard of. Not to mention what he did the other night: berserkers aren’t supposed to have enhanced senses like that.”

Thank God. If they did, it would have been impossible to put them down once the soul bleed dragged them into madness.

“You’re right,” Bela agrees. “There hasn’t been someone like him for almost two thousand years. That’s what makes him so valuable.”

There’s a wistful longing in her voice that makes Sam both uneasy and protective. Bela doesn’t get Dean. Hell, if Sam can manage it, she won’t ever get close enough to touch him.

He looks away from Bela—at the soft fall of water in the fountain beside him—in an attempt to gather his thoughts. There’s something here: some connection between his dream and what Bela just told him and _Dean_ that he can’t quite put his finger on. This feels important, damn it.

Speaking slowly as he feels his way around the edge of that maddening sensation, he says, “Bobby told me once that berserkers are using an altered ritual. He says that’s the difference between them and Dean. Berserkers choose the animal they want; Dean was chosen by his.”

When he looks back at Bela, she’s nodding as though she’s familiar with the concept. But of course she would be. She’s obviously done extensive research into the matter, and now that Sam thinks about it, he realizes that she said something about that in her apartment. Something about how she would never have sold Dean to Vincent if she’d known that the wolf chose him.

“There’s a brief mention of that kind of perversion in Tyr’s Bible. There was a tribe in the early years after Tyr’s successful bonding with the wolf. With typical male arrogance, they thought that they knew best what kind of animal they should join with.” There’s a certain amount of satisfaction in her voice as she adds, “It drove them mad. The spirit first—trapped unwilling in flesh it didn’t want—and then the man.”

Sam wants to point out that _being_ chosen is driving Dean mad as well and then doesn’t. Berserker insanity isn’t really the point here. “Look, what I’m getting at is: why change the ritual if the original rite is so much stronger?”

Bela shrugs. “There’s nothing in the Bible about that. It was composed around one thousand B.C., and the altered ritual didn’t come into popular use until the third century _A.D._ , as far as I can tell.”

Sam isn’t sure that’s an answer to his question, and there’s a hollow quality to Bela’s gaze that tells him the avoidance is deliberate. Before he can press for a straight answer, there’s a knock at the door and a gruff voice shouts, “Room service!”

Bobby isn’t even in the suite yet and Sam already wants to punch him.

“We’ll finish this later,” he promises.

“Looking forward to it,” Bela responds, giving him her most insincere smile.

It’s strange to see Bobby without his cap. Sam can count the number of times the man’s been without it on one hand, and on at least two of those instances, Bobby only took it off because he had blood dripping down from his temple and needed stitches. Dean used to speculate that Bobby slept in the thing.

Even stranger than Bobby’s naked head are the glasses perched on his face: gold rims with thick, Coke-bottle lenses that magnify his eyes. He’s holding a covered silver tray in one hand and as soon as Sam closes the door behind him, Bobby shoves the tray into his hands.

“Thank God,” he grunts. “Another minute and I was gonna go blind.” Taking the glasses off, he rubs at his eyes, scrunching his forehead up and blinking rapidly. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to see with those things?”

Still squinting slightly, he starts to look around at the suite—expression verging between amazed and disgusted by the extravagance—and then he catches sight of Bela and freezes.

“Hi, Bobby,” Bela says brightly.

“Bela.” With ominous care, Bobby folds the glasses and puts them into his breast pocket.

“It’s wonderful to see you again. How have you been doing?” Bela’s all smiles and false cheer and for once, Sam doesn’t think that she’s doing it to be annoying. No, Bela is actually nervous. From the expression on Bobby’s face, she ought to be.

For a long moment, Bobby just _looks_ at her. Then, in a flat voice, he says, “I oughta shoot you.”

Bela’s smile wavers for a moment and then firms. “Now, Bobby—”

“You didn’t even blink, did you?” Bobby continues, stalking past the fountain and toward the dining room table where Bela is sitting. “I bet you didn’t. You looked at him and you saw a walking check and you didn't hesitate for one goddamned second.”

Bela raises her chin. “What I _saw_ was a danger to society, and my solution was a tad more humane than burying him in the backyard like a stray dog.”

Sam would be upset, but he’s used to Bela’s biting words. Bobby hasn’t been here as long, though, and his face goes red and choleric.

“Humane?” he sputters. “You call this _humane_ , what they’re doing to him? Did you know what was going to happen to him before you sold him upriver?” Whirling back to Sam, he demands, “Did she know?”

Sam, who doesn’t have the answer to Bobby’s question, shrugs. Over the last few days, he’s slowly been coming to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter whether she knew or not. What matters is getting Dean out. What matters is why she’s helping them now, although Sam is certain he won’t be able to drag that information out of her without the help of a blow torch and some nails.

He isn’t quite that desperate.

Not yet.

“Why don’t I leave you boys to do some catching up,” Bela suggests, rising in a smooth motion and heading for her room.

“No,” Bobby says, whipping his head back around. “I want you where I can see you. You sit right over there and keep your trap shut.” He points to an armchair next to the couch and, after a brief hesitation, Bela adjusts her course and does as she’s told. Sitting back in the chair, she crosses her legs and holds the book on her lap, torn page peeking out beyond the others.

In the strained silence that follows, Sam walks to the dining room table and puts the tray down. Bobby follows him over.

“I think there’s an omelet under there, if you’re hungry,” he offers.

“I’m fine.”

Although Sam hasn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, and threw up even that small meal after he found Bela’s note last night, he’s telling the truth. Thinking about Dean—about what his brother has been forced to endure while Sam sat on his ass in New York—isn’t all that conducive to a hearty appetite. He turns away from the table and forces himself to meet Bobby’s gaze head on. Waits for the anger to start up again and feels nothing but tired resignation.

“Hey, Bobby,” he says finally. “Thanks for coming.”

It’s just something to say, isn’t meant as forgiveness, but Bobby obviously hears more than Sam is offering. Tearing up, he hauls him into a fierce hug.

“ _Goddamn,_ boy,” Bobby whispers. “Took you long enough to ask.”

The urge to remind Bobby that he _didn’t_ ask—that Bobby invited himself to this particular party—rises in Sam and then subsides. Giving Bobby an awkward pat on the back, he disentangles himself from the hug.

Bobby opens his mouth—to apologize again or maybe to say how sorry he is about what Dean’s going through—and Sam hastens to shove the conversation back into less volatile channels. “You have it?”

Swiping at his cheeks with the back of one hand, Bobby nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got it.”

His voice is faint: husky with a depth of emotion that leaves Sam uncomfortable. It’s difficult to stay angry with the man when he sounds that hurt. Shoving his hands in his pockets, Sam watches while Bobby pulls a CD case and a smaller object, which Sam recognizes as a flash drive, from inside his jacket.

“Ash said either of these would work fine,” Bobby says, offering them to Sam.

Before Sam has even started to work his hands free, Bela speaks up from the armchair. “Do you mind if I take a look?” she calls. “Seeing as I’m the one who’ll be doing the actual installation?”

Bobby shoots Sam a disbelieving look and then grimaces at Sam’s shrug.

“She’s all we have,” Sam points out.

Bobby’s dour grunt tells Sam just what he thinks of that statement, but he brings the CD and the drive over to the armchair and hands them to Bela without arguing. Bela turns them both over in her hands and then tosses the CD onto the coffee table.

Holding the flash drive up, she smiles at Sam and says, “This is perfect. I have a necklace with a cavity just large enough to conceal it.”

“When can you do it?” Sam asks, coming closer.

Bela curls her hand around the drive, hiding it. “I laid the groundwork with Vincent yesterday, so I should be able to install it tonight.”

“What kind of groundwork?” Bobby grunts.

When Bela’s eyes flick over to him, they’re as empty as glass marbles. “The kind that works,” she says.

Bobby gives her a flat stare for a few moments and then says, “I’d have to be dumber than a pile of bricks to just take your word that you’re gonna do anything. Do I _look_ dumb to you?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

Bobby’s face goes bright red. And here Sam thought he’d be the one with the problem keeping his temper. He’s about to put a restraining hand on the man’s arm when Bobby lets out a short, hard breath and says softly and clearly, “You’re gonna tell me just how you’re planning on installing that rootkit or this conversation is gonna get a whole hell of a lot less friendly.”

Bela can’t appreciate being threatened so often, but outwardly she’s as unruffled as ever at Bobby’s words. Dropping her head against the back of the chair, she regards him calmly. Only the biting edge to her voice gives her away.

“Fine. Vincent has a personal computer in his room. Since he’s the head of Camargo Industries, he has administrative access. He’s also neurotic about cleanliness. All I need to do is get him to work up a little sweat and then install the rootkit while he showers.”

“You expect me to believe he’d let you get that close?” Bobby demands.

Bela lets out a curt little laugh. “He may not trust me, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want me.” Her mouth purses in disdain. “You men are all alike.”

Bobby leans down in a sudden movement, one hand on either arm of Bela’s chair, and says, “I get that you think all men can be led around by their dicks, but just so we’re on the page here, I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last woman on earth. I think you’re low and vile and disgusting. It turns my stomach to look at you. I’d go so far as to say you had the morals of a snake, but I wouldn’t want to offend any reptiles.”

“And if I get so much as a _whiff_ of a double cross—or if you do something I don’t much care for the taste of—then I will bring the wrath of God down on your ass. Are we clear?”

The color is high in Bela’s face, and Sam can’t tell if it’s from shame or anger. Her voice is cold when she answers, “Crystal,” but that isn’t really an indication of anything. Her masks are too good: could give Dean a run for his money.

“Good,” Bobby says, straightening. He looks down at her for a moment longer and then, turning away with his lips turned down in distaste, adds, “I changed my mind. Get the hell out of my sight.”

Bela stands stiffly, not looking at either of them. Her head is high as she walks away: her eyes fixed firmly on her destination. When she reaches her room, she doesn’t slam the door behind her, but it’s a close thing.

Bobby rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head a little. “That woman,” he mutters. “She oughta be locked up.”

Privately, Sam thinks that jail is a little lenient for Bela, but he keeps his mouth shut on the subject.

“Did you talk to Dean?” Bobby asks as he sits down heavily on the couch.

Sam knew that he’d have to talk to Bobby about this, but somehow he still feels blindsided by the question. He swallows with difficulty around the hard lump in his throat and shifts his gaze to the fountain. Soothing patter of water. Calming. Cleansing.

“Sam?”

“His … appointment … wouldn’t cancel.”

“Damn it,” Bobby swears softly under his breath. Then, louder, he offers, “I’m sorry, son.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sam says.

It’s a long time before either of them speaks again.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Sam and Bela arrive at the Arena that evening, Sam is nursing a staticky tension headache. Irritation prickles beneath his skin. He’s also tired and hungry: two states of being that he doesn’t think will be changing anytime soon. Not when the nausea raises its ugly head every time he even contemplates eating.

His meeting with Bobby was more than a little frustrating after Bela left the room: their conversation circling round and round and never really getting anywhere. They couldn’t trust Bela, but they had no choice. They needed to get Dean out, but they had no information. They needed more help—help they could _trust_ —but neither of them had anyone they’d call in for this kind of thing.

Even worse, the longer that Sam spent with the man, the closer he could feel his anger creeping. He managed to hold it off—barely—but there’s always tomorrow, and the day after that. And sooner or later, Sam knows that he’s going to lose it.

What he doesn’t know is whether he’ll end up yelling at Bobby for lying to him about Dean or whether he’ll tell Bobby to shove his fucking promise up his ass.

It’s a toss up.

Bela was the capper on an already spectacular day. When Bobby left and she finally emerged from her room, she seemed to sense that Sam was upset, and why. ‘Trouble in paradise?’ she smirked, and then grinned all the way down to the lobby like a cat with a canary. She hasn’t said anything since they got in the limo, but he can feel the amusement radiating off her.

Smug bitch.

Luckily, she peels off from him once they’re inside with a quick peck on the cheek and a “See you back at the suite, darling.” Hank doesn’t appear to be on duty tonight, either, which eases Sam’s headache considerably. He isn’t sure he could deal with the man’s sneering jibes.

As Sam watches the first two matches of the night, his irritation shifts into anticipation. He’s going to see Dean again, and this time he isn’t going to let his brother chase him away with a few harsh words. No, Dean is going to talk to Sam whether he wants to or not, and he’s going to let Sam take a look at whatever injuries he sustains in tonight’s match.

Then the lights come up on the third and final match and the bottom falls out of Sam’s stomach.

There are two fighters squaring off in the ring, and a gaudily-dressed announcer introducing them, and no sign of Dean. Maybe it’s fucked up to be devastated not to see Dean being put through his paces in the cage, but the explanations Sam comes up with for his brother’s absence are worse.

Dean’s sick. He was hurt too badly fighting last night to fight tonight. He was hurt too badly _fucking_ last night to fight. Oh God, did whatever asshole he was with _do_ something to him?

The match doesn’t take long, but by the time it’s over Sam’s stomach is in knots and there’s sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He hurries toward the elevator before the rest of the audience—which is visibly smaller than it was the last time he was here—files out. He has to get out of here before he loses the last, crumbling bits of his composure in the face of the frantic fear pounding through him.

Sam is almost at the elevator doors when a hand comes down on his arm. It takes a concentrated effort not to slug the hand’s owner when he turns around.

The man who stopped him is wearing the same black suit as the rest of Vincent’s employees. He’s smaller than most of his associates, with a neat moustache and muddy brown eyes.

Clenching his right hand into a fist at his side, Sam grounds out, “Yes?”

If the man is taken aback by Sam’s hostility, it doesn’t show on his placid face. He offers a perfunctory bow and announces, “I was told to escort you to the guest suite, Mr. Carver.”

Ohthankgod. That means _(Sam hopes)_ that Dean is in good enough shape that Vincent thinks he’ll be able to perform. Of course, Vincent thought Dean would be able to perform after three assassins bled him in the cage, so that isn’t saying much.

“Good,” Sam chokes out.

He couldn’t swear to it, but he thinks the path the muddy-eyed man takes him on is different from the one he took two days ago. There are too many right turns, and he certainly doesn’t remember passing a door—steel, not wood, which is remarkable in and of itself down here—marked _Yggdrasil._

It isn’t the word that strikes him, although it’s strange to see the World Tree invoked here, but the _feel_ of the room behind the door. It doesn’t make any sense—it's just a door, Sam can’t have any idea what lies behind it—but his steps slow. His thoughts, for no reason at all, turn to the possessed priest in New York.

 _‘I thought they were angels,’_ the priest told him. Dying, red bubbled words that clung to Sam’s skin like a film of oil.

Sam realizes that his escort is giving him an impatient look and picks up his pace again, leaving the door and the memory behind him. He’s twitching inside of his skin: needs Dean, needs the reassurance of his brother’s presence. Most of all, and very suddenly, Sam needs to know that Dean is okay.

Something is going on: something dark and shifting at the corners of his vision. Like heat mirage, it disappears whenever he tries to get a good look at it, only to return the instant he turns away, nagging.

And it’s dangerous. Whatever it is that Sam isn’t fitting together here, it’s dangerous to Dean.


	13. The Price of Conversation

Sam spends almost five minutes pacing the foyer of the guest suite, dress jacket tossed over the arm of the couch and shirt sleeves rolled up, before Dean finally lets himself in. When he sees Sam, he freezes just in front of the door, one hand resting on the handle with his eyes wide.

 _Like a startled deer,_ Sam thinks, and then he’s rushing forward and pushing the door the rest of the way closed. Dean flinches—at the sound of it clicking shut, or maybe at Sam’s nearness—and Sam reaches out to catch his brother’s arm: to hold him before he runs.

“Are you okay?” he asks urgently.

Dean blinks twice and then seems to gather himself. Scowling, he stomps further into the suite. “Damn it, Sam! I told you to get out of here!” He’s heading for the bedroom, and Sam senses his brother’s intent—to get on the other side of that door and slam it shut behind him.

He gives chase, grabbing Dean by the upper arm and dragging him around. Dean resists, of course, because nothing’s ever easy with him. Although Sam should have expected it, the unwilling weight of his brother’s body sends him off balance and they both end up crashing into the wall.

Sam’s concern for Dean’s health is pretty much gone at this point—Dean isn’t acting injured, and he’s being an asshole—so he doesn’t hesitate to grab his brother's shoulder. Digging his thumb and index finger into the tiny ball of nerves underneath Dean’s scapula, he twists and shoves his brother face first against the wall. Dean hisses, muscles tensing as he tries to shrug Sam off.

Bringing his forearm up, Sam presses down on the back of his brother’s neck in a counter that has the twin benefits of improving his own leverage and taking away some of Dean’s. He’s seen his brother fight, of course, and he knows that, leverage or not, Dean could take him in a second if he really wanted to. But after that single, weak attempt, Dean quiets. Wary of any further attempts on his brother’s part to get away, Sam loosens up slowly, but Dean still doesn’t move.

The position is starting to feel awkward. Sam is too aware of Dean’s hair brushing his forearm. His thumb isn’t digging into his brother’s skin anymore, but he’s still putting enough pressure on Dean’s shoulder to feel the thickened ridge of a scar where there wasn’t one before. Dean’s panting into the wall, and Sam realizes that he’s close enough to feel his brother’s breath, warm and moist, rebounding off of that barrier.

He should let go. He should back away.

With need and frustrated anger rushing through him, he can’t make himself do either.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Not without you.”

Silence is Dean’s only response and the tension that’s been bubbling under Sam’s skin all night sharpens into frustrated anger. Why the hell does everything always have to be so difficult with Dean? He tightens his grip on his brother’s shoulder until he hears a pained grunt.

“Why didn’t you fight tonight?”

“Why?” Dean bites out. “Were you planning on betting on me?”

“I’m _worried_ about you, asshole!”

“I can take care of myself.”

It’s an old argument: words that Sam has heard a hundred times if he’s heard them once. In some ways—in this way especially—Dean is still the same self-sacrificing, stubborn son of a bitch he was when Sam left for Stanford. He still refuses to admit that he’s less than fine, less than Dad’s perfect soldier, and Sam’s frustration whites out his vision for a few seconds.

When he can see again, he mutters, “Jesus Christ,” and releases Dean before he gives into the temptation to try shaking some sense into him. Sam stares at his brother and Dean doesn’t move. Just rests his forehead against the wall with no intention of turning around to face Sam even though he’s got plenty of room to do so now that Sam has stepped back.

There must be words that Sam could use to break through his brother’s defenses and get at the man beneath, but he doesn’t know what they are. He only knows the old pattern: the thrust and parry that he and Dean have been repeating for so many years that Sam doesn’t even have to think about his next move anymore. They’ve worn deep grooves in themselves, paths traveled by instinct more than conscious intent, and those paths don’t lead anywhere Sam wants to go.

Into the silence, Dean finally says, “I get one night on, two nights off.”

Now that Sam thinks about it, limiting Dean’s appearances makes for good business. He’s the Arena’s biggest draw—if Sam needed confirmation of that fact, he wouldn’t have to look any farther than the drop in attendance at tonight’s ‘show’. Constant exposure would ruin the allure of the exotic.

“I want you to go,” Dean adds.

Sam’s entire body tenses in protest. “Not without you.”

Dean lets out a shuddering sigh and then says, “I’m not going anywhere, Sam. I can’t.”

Sam has been expecting his brother to say something like that ever since Vincent bowed Dean’s head for him in the ring. Nodding to himself, he says, “Take off your shirt.”

That finally gets a reaction. Dean looks over his shoulder, half-straightening. His eyes aren’t as sharp as Sam remembers them, hazed over with whatever drugs Vincent is using to keep him docile out of the ring, but that ‘what the fuck’ expression is all Dean.

“Excuse me?” he says.

“Take off your shirt,” Sam repeats, doing his best to ignore the way that his own body is trying to react to that idea.

Dean stares at him for a few moments and then deliberately blanks his face. “It’s your dollar,” he mutters, turning around and unbuttoning his shirt. The silver wolf’s head at his throat trembles with his breath. Glints of light catch the metal and give the illusion that the wolf is winking at Sam.

He watches his brother’s chest come into view: all the old familiar scars and one or two that he hasn’t seen before. There’s no sign of the wounds from Dean’s fight two nights ago, and Sam has a moment of disorienting confusion before he remembers that the wolf healed Dean once before. Now that it’s free, it must be doing so again.

It’s the first time he’s ever been grateful to the wolf for anything.

His relief doesn’t last long, though, because Dean is shrugging his shirt back and Sam’s eyes are drawn to his brother’s right breast. The ginkgo leaf is right where he remembers it: a small smatter of freckles just an inch above Dean’s left nipple.

The desire simmering beneath Sam’s skin flares and he’s all but overcome with the urge cross the few feet between them. He wants to put his hands on Dean’s skin: trail his fingers down that ginkgo constellation and across Dean’s nipple. Wants to see if he can tease that small bud into hardening. He wants to lick along all of those twisting scars, tasting the history of pain etched into his brother’s body. Maybe then he’ll be able to understand the fucked up things that go on in Dean’s head.

Dean drops his shirt to the floor and stands there, eyes shuttered. “See something you like?” he deadpans.

Sam realizes that there’s a tension in the room. He’s used to tension between them, of course, but this feels different. It’s closer. Heavier. He’s staring at his brother’s bare chest and he has absolutely no idea what kind of expression is on his face. He thinks of the realization he came to early this morning—the knowledge that Dean saw this hunger in him—and feels all of sixteen again: hard and confused and angry and ashamed under his brother’s eyes.

The air clings to his skin, uncomfortable, but it only feeds the growing warmth in his gut. It’s the weight of potential pressing down on them, pressing them closer together, and Sam knows that Dean has all of the wrong ideas about what he’s asking for. The fact that Dean isn’t exactly wrong—Sam _does_ want that: wants to touch and take and own—is more than a little fucked up, but Sam’s annoyed enough by his brother’s behavior that he’s happy to push Dean’s buttons for a change.

“Turn around,” he says.

Dean’s expression doesn’t so much as twitch. Turning around, he puts his hands on the wall. Pauses. Then he leans forward and widens his stance. “This what you want?”

For a moment, Sam lets himself take in the spread of his brother’s shoulders: the tapered slimness of his hips. Dean is _his_ , spread out for the taking, unresisting if not unwilling, bought and fucking paid for, and at those last two thoughts, Sam feels his arousal melt away with the last, sullen remnants of his anger.

“No,” he answers softly. In this moment, here and now, it’s true. When he steps forward, though, he can’t help but reach out anyway: can’t be this close and _not_ touch.

Dean is his lodestone, always has been.

Sam’s hand brushes against Dean’s left shoulder, tracing an unfamiliar scar that spreads across the blade in a fan shape. It’s the damaged tissue that he felt when he had Dean in a shoulder lock earlier, so the scar’s presence doesn’t startle him, but its characteristics—skin shiny and too tight—do.

It’s a burn mark.

“They said a beam hit you,” he says, running his fingertips over that marred patch of skin. Dean’s muscles tremble beneath his hand.

“It did,” he says, keeping his voice carefully toneless. “Dislocated my shoulder. Bobby had to pop it back in.” He pauses and then, with a hint of a smirk, adds, “Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.”

Sam’s too busy wondering if that scar would taste different from the rest of Dean’s skin to pay any attention to the dig. He realizes that he’s about three seconds away from finding out and forces himself to change his grip to something more brotherly. No one is hurting Dean anymore, Sam least of all.

Narrowing his focus to the wolf inked into Dean’s skin, he does his best to ignore the fact that he can _smell_ his brother, no gunpowder to cover up the natural musk of Dean’s body. Can’t quite dampen the pleasant warmth riding low in his stomach. He was right, though: there are runes hidden among the vines encircling the wolf.

Tyr’s rune—Tiwaz—is there, of course, and Uruz, representing strength. Thurisaz, the thorn: rune of channeled destruction, and conflict, and eroticism. Hagalaz: the wrath of nature, uncontrolled forces. Nothing entirely unexpected. Maybe the way they’re positioned is the key.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dean grunts, breaking into Sam’s thoughts.

“I’m trying to figure out what kind of binding rune Vincent used on you,” he replies absently.

“What?” It’s half-question, half-laugh.

Sam frowns, annoyed by the continued interruption. “I need to figure out what he did so I can counter the effects when we get you out of here. Now shut up and let me think.”

“It’s just a tattoo, dumbass,” Dean says, shaking Sam off and turning around. “And I told you, I’m not going anywhere.” He leans down to retrieve his shirt and starts putting it back on, moving out from between Sam and the wall as he does so.

Sam pushes away his first impulse, which is to get angry again. If he gets angry, he’s going to start yelling, and then Dean is going to yell back, and they aren’t going to get anywhere.

“If it isn’t the tattoo, then what? What’s keeping you here?”

Dean ignores him, head down and mouth set in a tight line as he works at his buttons.

“Come on, man, talk to me,” Sam pleads, reaching for his brother’s arm in an attempt to get his attention.

Dean jerks away from the touch. The eyes he turns on Sam are cold beneath the drugs. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m out one amulet here.”

Sam blinks at him. “I know that, man, but you—you seem okay, so I thought—”

“You thought _what_? That I’m stronger than the wolf?” Dean barks a bitter laugh. “That son of a bitch was taking me an inch at a time even _with_ the amulet. Without it, I was—I couldn’t think straight, I wasn’t—” He pauses, pressing his lips together, and then says, “Everything was red.”

“I don’t understand.” Sam isn’t sure he wants to.

“I take something, okay? Once a day. It keeps the wolf quiet.”

Sam looks closer at his brother’s eyes: at the glassy quality of his gaze. “The drugs are for the wolf?”

“Drug, singular,” Dean corrects. “I don’t know where Vincent found the recipe, but it works.” His mouth quirks humorlessly. “I help him put on a show in the ring, play the tamed freak, and I get my shot.”

“And the rest of it?” Sam asks.

Dean glances toward the bedroom door and then lifts his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Guy needs his medication.”

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam breathes. He wants to pull his brother into a hug, but Dean is radiating hostility and nerves through his outward façade of disinterest. Between Dean’s mood and the knowledge of Sam’s desires that lies between them, any physical display of affection would be a disaster.

The smile Dean offers doesn’t penetrate his fogged eyes. “It’s cool. Free sex, right? Always a good thing.”

“Dean, don’t.” It’s less than a whisper. Sam can’t manage anything louder with his chest aching this fiercely.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pretend this isn’t—” _Rape,_ he’s going to say, but he can’t quite get it out. “Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter,” he finishes clumsily.

Dean turns away with a disdainful snort and heads into the dining room. “I’m not ‘pretending’ anything, Sam. You’re the one who gets his panties in a twist over a little fun, not me.” He steps behind the bar and disappears for a moment, coming back up with a glass and a bottle of bourbon.

“’Fun’,” Sam repeats dully from his place in the hallway.

“Yeah, _fun_.” Dean is using his ‘stop pushing this because you’re starting to annoy me’ voice, but the bourbon sloshes onto the counter when he pours because his hands are shaking.

Sam follows him finally, moving toward the bar with measured steps: careful not to spook his brother. Dean isn’t actually looking at him, all of his attention seemingly on the bar as he mops up the spilled alcohol with a handful of cocktail napkins, but Sam can tell that his brother is hyperaware of him anyway. The steadily rising tension in Dean’s body telegraphs that loud and clear.

It hurts to see Dean like this: hurts to _know_ , instead of just suspect, that while Sam was looking for his brother people were hurting him: using him. Hurts like hell to see what it’s done to the man he used to know. Dean is raw all over; the thin protection of whatever self-worth he had before has been ripped away, leaving him exposed. Every fight, every stranger’s caress, is drawing fresh blood: digging through flesh and into bone and leaving gouges on his brother’s soul.

Bela was wrong before. It won’t take centuries for Dean to forget himself. It might not even take decades.

Sam draws up in front of the bar and puts one hand on the polished wood in his brother’s eye line. Dean doesn’t flinch, but the knuckles of the hand closed around the napkins go white. With his other hand, he grabs the glass of bourbon and lifts it to his lips.

Sam watches his brother’s throat work, the flutter of Dean’s eyelashes, and feels a surge of protectiveness that leaves him weak in the knees. When he speaks, he can’t keep the pain out of his voice. “Dean, I know you. I know you’re not okay with this.”

“No,” Dean snaps, slamming his drink back down on the bar and sloshing alcohol everywhere again. “What I’m ‘not okay with’ is you being here.” His head jerks up finally, and his eyes burn the cold, biting green of mint leaves. Sam finds himself taking a step back beneath that gaze. “I mean, what part of me faking my own death did you not get?”

There’s the same knee-jerk of anger as last night, but Sam is ready for it this time. He forces himself to stand still under the force of his brother’s eyes and says, “I talked to Bobby, man. I know what you thought you were doing.”

“Yeah, getting you off my ass.” Dean utters a harsh laugh and lifts his drink, unmindful of the fact that hand and glass alike are dripping amber drops. He tosses the rest of the bourbon down and then mutters, “God, I wish I had burned. Better than having to put up with your emo bullshit.”

Even though he knows they’re not true, Dean’s words leave Sam’s throat tight. “That’s not why,” he says.

“No?” Dean shoots back, reaching for the bottle again. “How the fuck would you know?”

 _Because I know you,_ Sam thinks, but he doesn’t have a chance to say anything before Dean is running his mouth again.

“You know, you’re a real piece of work,” Dean says, pouring more bourbon. He’s recovered control over his hands, and this time all of the alcohol goes into the glass. “I say ‘stay’, you run off to college. I say ‘get lost’ and I can’t pry you off my ass with a death certificate.”

“Dad _died_ , Dean. I wasn’t going to just leave you.”

Sam’s a little amazed by his own bluntness, but the expected pain doesn’t follow that statement. Sometime over the last year, between the peaks and canyons of the emotional rollercoaster ride his brother took him on, he moved past the loss. There’s a tiny pang of guilt—he thinks he might owe the man more—but he’s too focused trying to get through to Dean to pay much attention to it.

Dean doesn’t seem bothered by the mention of their father’s death either, but it’s Dean, and Sam isn’t buying it for a minute. When he looks for the telltale tremor in his brother’s hands, he sees that Dean’s fingers are shaking slightly again as he screws the cap back onto the bourbon.

“Yeah, well Dad’s been dead for over a year now, and I’m fine, so there’s the door.” Dean lifts the glass and gestures with it before offering a tight, insincere smile. “Don’t let it hit you on the way out.” He moves out from behind the bar, taking a long draw from his drink as he walks.

Sam watches his brother stride over to the table and kick one of the chairs out. Dropping into it, Dean throws his legs out in front of him and crosses them at the ankle. Stares a challenge at Sam while taking another swallow from the glass.

Sam meets his brother’s hostility head on and says, “You aren’t fine, man.”

“I don’t believe this,” Dean mutters. “What, you want me to take out a statement or something? I’m _fine_.”

Courtesy of his masochistic brain, Sam is presented with the memory of Dean standing on the last of the Flying Dragons’ neck. He sees the casual way his brother shifted his weight—no shoes on Dean’s feet, so he must have felt the bones breaking, the warmth of the man’s skin, his panicked efforts to breathe. And he still didn’t hesitate.

But Sam doesn’t believe it. He can’t.

“You’re fine with killing people,” he says.

“Murderers, rapists.” Dean shrugs and tosses back the rest of his second drink. “Trust me, they’re better off dead.”

Sam wants to ask if Dean really believes that: if he thinks that all of the people Vincent throws in his path are monsters in human form. He wants to ask Dean if that justifies murder. He knows how those questions are going to sound to his brother, though: like accusations. Like censure and disgust and contempt. Which are the last things that Dean needs from him right now.

“And this?” he asks instead. “Are you ‘fine’ with this too?”

One corner of Dean’s lips twitches up wryly and he sets his glass down on the table. “If you can’t even say it, Sam, then you’re not ready to talk about it.”

Firming his jaw, Sam sends back, “Are you fine with the sex?”

That gets him another shrug and a casual, “Never had any complaints.”

Sam’s fraying calm snaps at the deliberate misunderstanding and he shouts, “Damn it, Dean, that’s not what I meant and you know it!”

All of the edged humor slips off of Dean’s face. He regards Sam with a flat expression and says, “It’s sex. Only difference now is I don’t have to waste time with the soft sell.”

“No, because Vincent does all the selling for you.” It’s out of Sam’s mouth before he can call it back, and God, but he wants to call do-over. Dean’s eyes, which weren’t all that open before, shutter completely. There’s a moment of deathly silence and then Sam offers, “You deserve better than this.”

It’s an olive branch, an extended hand, and Dean slaps it away with a curt, “Whatever.” He pushes to his feet and is halfway to the bedroom before Sam realizes he’s running again.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Dean!” he yells at his brother’s retreating back.

Dean just gives his head a little shake and lifts one hand, giving Sam the finger over his shoulder. It’s déjà vu, Greenville all over again, and Sam has no chance of controlling the torrent of anger that rushes through him.

Dean has a head start, but Sam’s legs are more than long enough to make up for it. He reaches his brother just as Dean’s hand closes on the doorknob and grabs Dean's arm, hauling his brother back and spinning them so that he’s standing between Dean and escape.

“You can’t just leave whenever you don’t like the way the conversation’s going,” he growls.

“What do you want from me?” Dean shouts, pulling his arm free. Sam can almost see through the mask plastered on his brother’s face: Dean’s defenses scraped so thin that they’re nothing more than a flimsy, transparent layer. “You want me to admit I messed up? Okay, I messed up. I messed up and now I’m paying for it, all right?”

Pity mingles with Sam’s anger, but he’s been holding the rage in too long to hold back now. “You _did_ mess up, Dean, but not in New York. You screwed yourself over when you ditched me in Greenville.”

Dean laughs. It’s a strange sound, both resigned and disbelieving. “Here it comes,” he mutters, turning around and heading back toward the front of the suite.

Sam follows, pissed off and determined. “You had no goddamned right to do that to me! You have _no idea_ what I went through, thinking you were dead. And yeah, you fucked up. It isn’t your responsibility to protect me anymore: not from the things we hunt, and sure as hell not from yourself!”

Dean’s going for the bar again, reaching for the bottle of bourbon. Sam knows that he isn’t even going to bother with a glass this time, that he’s trying to drink his way out of this conversation if Sam won’t let him physically leave, and that isn’t happening. Without letting himself think about it, he grabs the bottle from his brother’s hands and hurls it against the wall. Alcohol sprays out, peppering them both, as the glass shatters.

“Jesus Christ, Sam!” Dean yells.

“Stop. Running.”

Dean presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything.

“I can do this all night, man,” Sam tells him. “We’re alone in a soundproofed room and I have no problem with knocking you down and sitting on you to make you listen.”

Dean’s still screaming defiance with every line of his body, but he isn’t moving, and he’s watching Sam steadily. Sam guesses that’s the most cooperation he’s going to get, at least for now.

He takes a moment to pick up the thread of his argument and then says, “You’re my brother. You can’t cut me out whenever you feel like it—especially when you need me most.”

“I was going insane, Sam,” Dean snaps. “One day at a time. You didn’t need to see that.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make!” Sam shoots back, and Dean drops his gaze. “I’m not five anymore, damn it, and I’m old enough to make my own choices about what I need to see, and if you think for _one second_ that I wouldn’t want to be with you for every minute I could, then you’re even dumber than I thought.”

Dean’s quiet for a moment and then he says, “ _I_ didn’t want you to see that.” When he lifts his head, there’s a glimmer of anger at the back of his eyes. “You think this is how I wanted you to remember me? You think I wanted to put you in a position where you’d have to shoot me? Watch _Bobby_ shoot me?”

A flare of denial tightens Sam’s gut at the thought of Bobby holding a gun to Dean’s head and pulling the trigger like he’s a leg-broke horse or a rabid dog that needs to be put down. The fact that Dean made Bobby promise to do just that only ratchets his anger up a notch.

“I don’t give a fuck what you wanted!” he shouts. “You can’t keep making decisions for me. You’re not _Dad_ , Dean. Don’t act like him.”

Dean jerks as if Sam just slapped him, and there it is: the weight of their father’s loss a brief, shocking clarity in Dean’s drug-fogged eyes.

 _I went too far,_ Sam thinks. His anger doesn’t vanish but dampens, held down by concern for Dean’s teetering stability. Sighing, he rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Look, I’m sorry, I—”

“No. No, you’re right.” Dean’s expression hardens. “I’m not Dad. Because if I was, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.”

He takes a step forward and Sam unconsciously shifts back, keeping an open space between them. There’s violence swirling around his brother’s body, everything in the way he’s holding himself screams predator, and if Sam isn’t precisely prey then he’s still unarmed and outmatched.

Dean smiles grimly and says, “Dad would’ve dragged you right down with him. He would’ve infected you and watched you turn and he wouldn’t have lost a second’s sleep over it. And don’t give me any of that ‘Dad would never do anything to hurt us’ crap, because he almost did it to me.”

Sam knows that. Knows it not from his brother’s lips, but from their father’s. They were hunting vampires in Manning, Colorado, and Dean was leaving to get a jar of dead man’s blood. It was the first time that Sam was alone with the man since he’d joined with the bear, and the strangeness that colored everything that John did.

John waited until Dean was in the car and down the road before announcing, ‘I want you to watch me around him.’

‘Watch you how?’ Sam wanted to know. Felt himself gearing up for a fight he wasn’t even sure was coming.

John continued to stare in the direction Dean had disappeared. There was an eerie gold sheen as his eyes caught the weak sunlight. ‘He’s fighting it, but he shouldn’t. We’re better as one. Stronger. It’s safer.’

Sam broke into a cold sweat. ‘Dad?’

‘I almost took his amulet in New Orleans. That’s why I left, son.’ When he finally tore his gaze from the road and looked at Sam, there were unshed tears in his eyes. ‘Two-as-one is better, but I can’t make that decision for him. I won’t. So I need you to watch me. I need you to keep your brother … safe.’ His mouth twisted on the last word, like it wasn’t the one he wanted but was the closest he could come.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sam answered, although he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to stop John if it came down to it.

Dean is still challenging him, but remembering their father’s request—his care for Dean even in the midst of his certainty that Dean was doing something wrong—has, in some strange way, reassured Sam.

“But he didn’t, did he?” he points out. “He stopped himself and then he—” He trails off, blindsided by another memory: of Bobby this time. Bobby with a fresh shiner and a bloody nose telling him, _‘He told me he was worried about hurting you. Said that he wasn’t sure anymore if the wolf wanted to kill you or turn you and that he couldn’t live with himself if he did either.’_

God, Bobby told him why Dean left—he _told_ Sam—and it just went in one ear and out the other because Sam was too damned angry, and then too worried about Dean, to process it.

“Is that—is that what this was about?” he asks. “Is it?”

Dean deflates, the threat running out of him on a low sigh. “Sam …”

“No, Dean. I want to know. Why did you do it?”

“You know why,” Dean tries, not really looking at him.

Sam moves closer and this time it’s Dean who gives way. “I want to hear you say it. You didn’t just do it so I wouldn’t have to watch, did you? _Did you?_ ”

“No.” The word is torn unwilling from Dean’s throat, and if Sam had any doubts how much this was affecting his brother, then he doesn’t any more.

Protect Sammy. It’s Dean’s primary directive, it’s how he measures his worth, and Sam understands for the first time how Dean could have been so fucked up, so twisted around inside, that he thought faking his death was the only way out. This thing has been festering inside of Dean for over a year, and it’s long past time to lance the wound.

“Then why?” Sam pushes, and Dean can’t hold it in any longer.

“Because all I could think about was turning you, alright?” he yells. “I couldn’t sleep at night, Sam, all I could do was lie there and listen to you breathe and the wolf just wouldn’t shut up. It kept telling me that it would make everything right again, that you’d—that you’d stay.” His voice breaks on the word and he grimaces before continuing, “You’d stay if I made you pack, and I wouldn’t have to spend every second of every minute of every goddamned day wondering when you were gonna take off for Stanford again.”

Dean is panting like he’s just run through one of Dad’s PT drills, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. When he turns away and heads behind the bar again, Sam lets him. He stands there quietly while Dean finds a fresh bottle and takes a long draw from it. Watches as Dean slowly rebuilds his defenses, shaky as they are.

When Dean seems calm enough, Sam offers, “I wasn’t going to leave.”

Dean shrugs and won’t look at him.

Sam reaches out and puts a gentle hand on his brother’s wrist. “Dean, I wasn’t.”

For the first time all night, Dean doesn’t pull away from the touch. “I’m not blind, Sam,” he says softy. “You were miserable.”

 _It’s like talking to a brick wall,_ Sam thinks, and takes his hand back with an exasperated noise. “I was miserable because you were being an asshole, you idiot! Not because I was waiting for a chance to run for the door!”

Dean fiddles with the bottle, fingers nervous and trembling.

Taking a deep breath, Sam runs a hand through his hair. “Look, what I said that day, that you were the only reason I was there, I didn’t—I didn’t mean it that way.”

Dean’s silent for a moment and then he says, “There aren’t a hell of a lot of ways to mean something like that.”

“Apparently there are enough. Because what I was _trying_ to tell you is that I would never leave you. Ever. I was trying to tell you that I love you.”

Dean’s head jerks up at that and his face goes murderous. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I love you, and I’m here for you, and I’m not going to let you push me away.”

“Don’t,” Dean chokes out, hand tightening on the bottle.

Sam ignores him and continues, “You seem to think that this only goes one way, but I need you too, man. Do you have any idea how lost I was when I thought you were dead?”

Dean utters a harsh laugh and then mutters, “I don’t need this shit.” He grabs the bourbon’s cap and starts screwing it back on with rough turns.

“I can’t do this without you,” Sam tells him. As Dean leans down to put the bottle back underneath the bar, he admits, “I wasn’t going to.”

Dean jerks upright at that. His eyes are cutting sharp for the first time all night. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Two way street, Dean.” Sam’s voice is surprisingly steady, considering this is the first time he’s even come close to talking about this out loud.

He sees the moment that Dean gets it. Sees the flash of horror on his brother’s face before Dean locks it up. Dean’s breath is coming fast, and he looks cornered. Trapped.

“I love you,” Sam says again, and if he means more than he should by that then it isn’t important right now. The important thing is making Dean hear it. Making him _understand_.

Dean stands there for a moment, obviously trying to get a hold of himself, and then says in a tight voice, “If you mean that, Sam—if you really mean it—then you’ll leave. You’ll get the fuck out now and never come back.”

As Sam stands there, frozen by the shock and pain of that declaration, Dean steps out from behind the bar and walks away. When the bedroom door slams shut a moment later, Sam is still staring at the wall. At the damp stain of bourbon where the bottle he threw hit: a blot in the shape of a fan. Or a ginkgo leaf.

He doesn’t know how he managed it, but he thinks that he just screwed things up even more.


	14. Acquisition

Sam knows straight off that it’s a dream. He remembers falling asleep: knows this is all in his head. In his case, of course, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also real.

It’s like watching a very vivid movie: unlike his dream of the berserkers, he has no sense of being physically present. The room he’s looking at is small—about the same size as a motel bathroom—and a uniform grey. No windows, although there is a metal square in the steel door that looks like it might slide open. No furniture unless you count the chains imbedded in the wall and floor.

Dean is lying on the floor by the wall furthest from the door—sprawled might be a better word for it. Sam can tell that there’s no tension anywhere in his brother’s body because Dean’s naked. He’s lying half on his side, hips twisted into a position that at least provides him with the illusion of modesty and face tucked into the crook of one arm. Sam can’t see his brother’s chest: can’t tell if, in this when and where, Dean is still wearing the amulet. He thinks yes, though: thinks that his freak show of a mind has taken him back to the early moments of his brother’s imprisonment.

Sam doesn’t have a body in this place, but he’s nauseated all the same.

Dean has always been larger than life; he crowds up a room just by walking into it, shoulders back and head held up at a cocky angle. Even now, years after Sam’s final growth spurt took him above his brother’s head, the fact that he doesn’t have to look up to meet Dean’s gaze keeps striking him as odd. Dean is a goddamn giant, after all: so tall he dominates everything around him, always leaves Sam standing in his shadow.

Lying there, unconscious and exposed, Dean doesn’t look much larger than a child. It’s as wrong as rain falling upward: as clouds blowing into the wind. Unnatural.

There are manacles fastened around Dean’s ankles and wrists: short chain leads bolting him to the floor. Another chain hangs down from midway up the wall, and Sam’s pain disappears in a jolt of anger as he realizes that it’s attached to Dean’s neck.

It’s the collar that sticks in Sam’s throat, same as it did in the Arena: the solid girth of it banding Dean’s skin. The humiliating, dehumanizing nature of the thing, like Dean’s nothing more than an exotic breed of dog.

 _Dean,_ he tries to call, but of course he has no voice. He has no power here: no control. He can only watch, and note the slow rise and fall of his brother’s chest.

There’s a hollow clang and the steel door swings inward. Sam is unsurprised to see Vincent stroll inside, wearing a pale green suit and closely followed by Hank. A third man brings up the rear—one of Vincent’s black-suited goons—and halts in the doorway. He stands there at attention, holding a covered tray out in front of him like a butler. The shapes beneath the white cloth are suggestive: long and thin, they remind Sam uneasily of the trays of rusted surgical implements at Roosevelt Asylum.

Vincent takes the three steps necessary to put him at Dean’s side and then squats, running assessing eyes over Dean’s body. If there were any doubts left in Sam about killing the man—making it hurt, making him understand what happened when you fucked with Dean—then they’re gone now. Just seeing that son of a bitch look at his brother with an appreciative, acquisitive expression—like Dean is an expensive new toy instead of a person—is more than reason enough.

“He’s supposed to be awake by now,” Vincent says. There’s a thin thread of displeasure in his voice, and Hank shifts his weight nervously.

“He came out of it on the flight. I had to dose him again.”

As if this wasn’t already bad enough. God, Sam can practically see his brother waking up, drugged and confused and alone, with the sound of a plane’s engines roaring in his ears. Sees the fear rise in that imagined Dean’s eyes and aches with it.

“His metabolism is faster than I thought it would be.” Vincent’s hand ghosts over Dean’s hair, possessive, and Sam wants to scream at the man to get his fucking hands off of his brother. Thankfully, the touch is brief, and then Vincent stands. “First thing tomorrow, I want to get Riley in here to do a full workup on him.”

Hank frowns. “I thought we were gonna leave him for a few days.”

“That’s why I don’t pay you to think,” Vincent notes as he moves back to lean against one of the walls. He digs around in the front pocket of his jacket for a moment and then pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Shaking one out, he holds it in his mouth while he exchanges the pack for lighter. It’s quiet in the room as Vincent lights up, taking a slow draw and rolling the smoke around in his mouth before exhaling again.

Finally, and with exaggerated patience, he says, “A brief period of lucidity will only break him faster. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides to roll over after a single night alone with his thoughts.”

Vincent’s lips quirk as though he’s just made a joke, and Hank snorts in amusement. They’re laughing at the thought of breaking Dean: smirking and superior at the thought of whatever they’re planning on doing to him.

 _No,_ says the cold, distant part of Sam that’s still thinking rationally through his rage. _Not ‘whatever’. You know what they’re talking about._

And he does, God help him. He just doesn’t want to admit to it, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to watch it happen. He does his best to pull free from the dream and it’s like trying to swim through a room filled with molasses. He tries to shut his eyes and has no eyes to shut.

Time continues to unwind in front of him, heedless of his struggles, and now Vincent takes another slow drag on his cigarette and says, “Okay, wake him up.” Smoke curls out with his words, noxious.

Hank grins at the command and, turning, folds back the cloth on the tray. The shapes that bothered Sam before are syringes: three of them. The one in the middle—the one Hank choses—is filled with a clear liquid and looks normal enough. The outer syringes are another story, though: the liquid _(drugs)_ they contain are too vivid and cast off light like radioactive bars. Brilliant, hyper blue on the right and glowing scarlet on the left and both of them so wrong that it sets Sam’s non-existent teeth on edge.

For all of their alien, jarring appearance, though, there’s something about the syringes that draws him: something powerful. He knows, without a doubt, that one of them contains Dean’s ‘medicine’. What he doesn’t know is what the other color _(the blue? the red?)_ is supposed to do.

Holding the syringe at a jaunty angle, Hank squeezes past Vincent and crouches next to Dean. He puts a hand on Dean’s hip and this time Sam forgets himself enough that he actually _tries_ to yell— _he’s mine, you don’t fucking touch him!_ The image quakes with the force of it, but Hank continues undisturbed because Sam isn’t _(wasn’t)_ there. Denial is a voiceless scream that runs through Sam’s consciousness, but he can’t do anything but watch as the needle bites deeply into the strip of Dean’s skin between Hank’s thumb and forefinger.

One slow press on the plunger and Dean’s flank twitches as the drug enters him. Hank draws the needle back cleanly and swipes his thumb over the injection site. Red shudders through Sam’s vision at the unnecessary caress and then subsides as Hank stands and steps back to put the now-empty syringe back in its place on the tray.

It doesn’t take more than a few moments for Dean to start shifting uncomfortably. His leg muscles flex and his outstretched hand opens and closes in unconscious grasps. He drags in an audible, semi-aware breath and moans, “Sammy,” in a dazed, little voice.

 _I’m here, Dean,_ Sam thinks, but of course he isn’t. He wasn’t. Oh God, he _wasn’t._

Hank’s contemptuous bray of laughter is jarring. “Aw, isn’t that cute? He wants his brother.”

Vincent ignores the jab, snubbing his cigarette out against the wall and moving closer to Dean again. His eyes are intent as Dean gradually lumbers back to consciousness. Dean’s toes curl into the concrete and a moment later he finally opens his eyes and frowns blearily at his arm.

“Dean,” Vincent calls softly.

Dean’s head jerks up at the sound of his name and he winces at the abrupt movement. He starts to raise a hand to his head and then, as he feels the weight of the chains—or maybe hears the metallic clink of their movement—he freezes. Tension bunches in his shoulders, awareness flooding him and tightening all of his muscles. His gaze, still groggy but increasingly alert, moves from Vincent down to his own body. Sam watches his brother realize that he’s naked, sees Dean’s mouth twist into something nervous before flattening out again. Rolling his lower half more firmly against the floor in an effort to conceal himself, Dean stares fixedly at his forearm.

“How are you feeling?” Vincent prods. “Are you thirsty?”

“Like I’m gonna drink anything you give me,” Dean mutters. His voice is rough—with fear? Because of the drugs? Sam doesn’t think it’s either.

He’s filled with the horrible certainty that when Dean woke up on the plane he was aware enough to know where he was, but too out of it to control his panic. Would Hank have drugged him again at the first scream? Or would he have waited, laughing, until Dean threatened to pull free from whatever restraints they had him trussed up in?

Sam wonders if he can throw up in this place. If he has to watch much more of this, then he’s going to find out.

“Mr. Mason, get our guest some water,” Vincent calls over his shoulder, and Hank edges past the man holding the tray and disappears down the hallway.

There’s a moment of uneasy silence and then Dean says, “You better not have fucked up my jacket getting it off.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be needing it again,” Vincent tells him. Sam supposes that his tone is supposed to be reassuring and doesn’t know why he’s bothering, considering what’s coming. When Dean rolls his eyes up to look at the man’s face, there’s a wry spark of humor in his face that tells Sam he’s wondering the same thing.

“You guys sure are persistent, I’ll give you that. But this isn’t gonna work any more than it did the last three times.”

Wait, what?

“What isn’t going to work?” Vincent asks, and he looks as confused as Sam feels.

According to Bela, that night at Powder was the first time Vincent tried to get his hands on Dean, and Sam believes her. There’s no reason for her to lie about that. He wonders if Dean’s head is still muddled from the drugs and then his brother’s next words knock him straight from confusion to dismay.

“Okay, we’ll play it stupid,” Dean grunts. “You wanna get the whole vomiting smoke in my face thing over with, though? Cause I gotta tell you: not the most appetizing thing in the world.”

Demons. Demons have been trying to possess Dean.

Sam’s mind whirls, moving from what Bela told him about the war between the animal spirits and the demons, to the dream he had two nights ago, and back again. Is this connected in some way? God, it has to be.

And why isn’t it working? What’s protecting Dean from possession? Is it the wolf? Sam doesn’t think so. Dad had the bear, and the yellow-eyed demon was still able to shove inside of him: was able to bleed Dean from the inside while John watched in horror. No, Sam thinks that this has more to do with his brother.

Dean has spent the last four years of his life fighting the wolf—fighting what amounts to a possession. That kind of strenuous mental and spiritual effort has to have some kind of effect, and in this case it must have given Dean enough strength to keep demons out. Jesus, the sheer will required to do something like that must be _tremendous_.

“I’m afraid you have me mistaken for something else,” Vincent says with a soft smile.

Dean smirks. “Okay, sure. So what is this? New recruitment technique for the circus?”

“Something like that.”

Dean’s face goes cautious. “You drugged me,” he says slowly, like he’s only just beginning to remember. “At the club, you—there were these guys, and—demons don’t—” His jaw firms and he says, distinctly, “Christo.”

Vincent continues to watch him with bland, completely human eyes.

“What the fuck do you want?” Sam can tell that his brother is trying to sound pissed off, but there’s an obvious tremor in his voice. He’s too unbalanced by the fact that he’s chained to the floor and naked, which is probably the whole point of that particular indignity.

Hank chooses that moment to return with a bottle of water and Vincent glances back at him with a small smile. “Thank you,” he says, accepting the bottle. Twisting off the cap, he crouches and holds it out to Dean.

Dean gives the bottle a scornful glance. “You actually think I’m gonna drink that, you’re even dumber than you look.”

“You need it,” Vincent says, still holding it out. “You’re probably dehydrated from the sedative.”

“Gee, I’m touched by your concern. Still not thirsty.”

Vincent sighs and sets the water down on the floor next to him. Reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket, he pulls out a small remote. Dean frowns at it and then grunts as Vincent presses a button and the chain lead starts to retract back into the wall.

Dean fights to keep his body low, but the metal collar is digging into his neck, the chain dragging him inexorably up. He chokes as he struggles against it, face red and sweat-slick: desperate to keep some small scrap of dignity. In the end, though, he isn’t strong enough to stop it.

He goes up on his knees as the last foot of the chain is drawn back into the wall, leaving the collar flush with grey stone. For the first time, Sam has visual confirmation that his brother is still wearing the amulet: the brass horned head gleams dully against Dean’s chest as he pants for air.

When everything comes to rest, Dean’s knees are planted on either side of the metal ring in the floor. His hands are closely bolted to that same ring, giving him only few inches leeway in any direction. Both ring and collar work together to force him into an open, demeaning posture: collar leaning him back at a painful angle and ring bolting his hands too low for him to make any attempt to cover himself. Dean’s thighs tremble with the effort to maintain the awkward, exposed position, but Sam thinks that the physical discomfort isn’t bothering his brother as much as the humiliation of being on display.

Sam is filled with a voyeuristic shame. He wants to avert his eyes—shouldn’t be looking at Dean’s humiliation like this—and isn’t allowed to because that isn’t how this dream works.

Vincent tucks the remote away again and retrieves the bottle. Despite his discomfort, there’s a glint of defiance in Dean’s eyes as Vincent moves the water toward him. He presses his lips together, looking past the waiting bottle.

“You’re making this harder than it has to be,” Vincent says, his voice tinged with exasperation.

Dean snorts but doesn’t risk opening his mouth to respond.

“If I wanted to drug you, there are more efficient ways,” Vincent points out, still holding the bottle poised just in front of Dean’s mouth.

Sam can tell that his brother recognizes the truth of that—probably remembers being stuck with a needle before getting pulled into the SUV—but if anything Dean only looks more determined. It isn’t about what might be in the water anymore, Sam understands. It’s about the fact that Dean is completely at these strangers’ mercy, naked and helpless and acutely aware of it. It’s about this being something that he can control.

Then Vincent grips Dean’s jaw with one hand, fingers digging into the pressure points, and takes that control away as Dean’s mouth slowly, reluctantly, opens. As soon as there’s enough room, he wedges the mouth of the bottle past the barrier of Dean’s teeth and tilts it up.

Dean chokes on the liquid, coughing as it overflows his mouth and splatters his chest. Vincent’s face is a picture of unconcern as he keeps pouring and Sam can see the moment his brother’s survival instinct kicks in and Dean starts swallowing. When the bottle is finally empty, a good deal of it has ended up on the floor and Dean’s skin, but Sam thinks that more than half has ended up in his brother’s stomach.

“Now, isn’t that better?” Vincent asks as he finally releases Dean’s jaw.

“Sadistic asshole,” Dean splutters.

Casting an insincere smile over his shoulder, Vincent moves back to hand the empty bottle to Hank. “I take care of my property.”

Something about that statement gets to Dean in a way that nothing else has. It isn’t difficult for Sam to figure out why. His brother has been assuming that this was a standard grab, torture and kill gig. Dean has no problem with dying—hasn’t ever since he woke up after the crash. The implication that Vincent has no intention of killing him, that he’ll be here for a long time, that they have _plans_ for him—that’s the problem.

Dean’s body goes lax and he shifts his gaze to the wall. The expression slowly drains from his face, leaving him with a vacant stare. Although he’s never seen it before, Sam knows that his brother is tapping into the distancing technique that John drilled into both of them.

‘I hope to God you never have to use it,’ he told them when he was sure they both had the basics down. ‘And I don’t want you to unless … well, unless there’s nothing else. You hear me?’

Sam heard him loud and clear. This particular technique was meant to be a last resort, used only when there was no hope of rescue. It was too dangerous to be used for anything else; a man could get lost inside his own mind if he went deep enough and never find his way back out.

Dean understood their father as well as Sam had, so Sam knows that this is Dean waving the white flag. This is Dean declaring his prospects not just bleak but nil and checking out of his body.

The brother Sam remembers isn’t a quitter. He doesn’t surrender: too stubborn to do anything but sprint forward against impossible odds. But the brother Sam remembers hadn’t lost most of himself to the wolf. He hadn’t spent the last six months wondering if today was going to be the day he finally fell.

He hadn’t been alone.

Vincent seems to have noticed something’s wrong. He’s frowning as he looks at Dean, and now he says, “Dean?”

There isn’t even a flicker of response in Dean’s eyes.

“Dean!” Sharper now, his voice laced with concern. When Dean continues to stare blankly ahead, Vincent turns to Hank and barks, “Snap him out of it.”

There’s a bounce in Hank’s step as he moves to stand in front of Dean. The force of his slap rocks Dean’s head to one side and turns his left cheek bright red, but there’s still no one at home in his eyes. Hank glances over his shoulder and Vincent nods at him.

“Again.”

The second slap is harder as Hank pivots his body to put his weight behind the blow, but it’s just as ineffectual.

“Drastic measures, Mr. Mason,” Vincent says.

Hank’s mouth widens in a smile and he pulls a switchblade out of his pocket. Then, before Sam can adjust to the sudden escalation of the situation, he leans down and grips Dean’s right hand. Sam’s only consolation is that Hank’s hands mostly block his view of the switchblade being forced underneath his brother’s nail.

Dean’s head thuds back into the wall and he lets out a shout. Even if he didn’t already know that Dean didn’t manage to stay locked inside his own mind, Sam wouldn’t have been surprised. Understanding the theory behind Dad’s distancing technique and actually putting it to use when someone is cutting into you are two different things. He supposes that you can train yourself to ignore even the most extreme distress signals from your body, but it probably takes practice, and he’s pretty sure that this is the first time his brother ever tried this.

When Hank slides the knife back out, Dean is in enough control that he only grunts. Hank’s eyebrows draw down in disappointment at the lack of response. He’s sullen as he straightens, and not so accidentally kicks Dean’s finger as he does so.

“Son of a _bitch_!” Dean growls, eyes shut and hands flexing in pain. There’s a small, dime-sized pool of blood by his injured finger. Hank tracks tiny red smears as he returns to the door, wiping his switchblade off with a handkerchief as he goes.

“Try that again and I’ll have your brother brought here,” Vincent says. “I’ll have Mr. Mason start with his nails, and then we’ll move onto teeth. If his screams haven’t managed to bring you around by then, I’ll put an expert to work.”

Sam can only describe Dean’s expression as shell-shocked. His skin is so pale that the smatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose stands out in sharp contrast: his eyes are wide and gleaming green. He heaves in a breath and the expression is gone, replaced by flaring rage.

“You touch him and I’ll kill you, I swear to God I will.”

“Well then, we’ll both have to work to ensure that that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”

Dean clenches his jaw and then, settling slightly, he grounds out, “What the fuck do you want?”

He doesn’t flinch as Vincent moves in again, but his head gives an involuntary jerk when the man reaches out. Vincent ignores the twitch, taking Dean’s chin in one hand and tilting his face up as far as the wall and the collar banding Dean’s neck will allow. With his eyes narrowed, he tilts Dean’s head from side to side. Studying him.

Color flares in Dean’s cheeks: an uncomfortable mix of rage and embarrassment at being scrutinized like this. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Vincent, though, and Sam is slightly heartened by the challenge he sees there.

After a long moment, Vincent drags his thumb across Dean’s jaw and notes, “You’re even prettier in person.”

There’s a clatter of chain as Dean makes another abortive attempt to cover himself. Sam’s nausea gives a sudden surge at the stutter of fear in his brother’s eyes. It only takes Dean a few seconds to school his expression, though, and then he offers Vincent a wide, empty smirk.

“Aw thanks, Princess, but I don’t swing that way.”

Lips quirking in amusement, Vincent finally releases Dean’s face. “You’re going to be worth every cent I paid for you.”

Dean’s smile stiffens into something grim and threatening. He seems to have decided that, if he isn’t allowed escape, he might as well go down swinging. “I’m gonna make you choke on me, you son of a bitch,” he promises.

The sound of the slap is echoing in the room before Sam really registers Vincent’s hand moving. “One more word about my mother and this conversation won’t remain quite so civilized,” the man warns.

Sam doesn’t think that blow was anywhere near as hard as the ones that Hank gave Dean a few minutes ago, but it must have caught him just right. When he spits, blood tints his saliva red. That stubborn challenge is still in his eyes, though, and Sam can tell that Dean is considering mouthing off anyway.

 _Don’t,_ he thinks. _For God’s sake, Dean, for once in your life, play it safe._ There’s what feels like an endless moment of tension and then the urge visibly subsides as Dean’s mouth flattens into a hard line.

“Now,” Vincent says conversationally. “My name is Vincent Camargo and I’d like you to work for me.”

Dean’s laugh is incredulous. “Whoo, boy! Do you need to work on your wining and dining skills.”

Vincent doesn’t seem bothered by the remark, nodding and replying, “Let me rephrase myself: you _are_ working for me. You belong to me.”

Sam half-expects another flicker of emotion at that, but Dean’s expression doesn’t waver. “Wait,” he says. “I know this one.” He clears his throat and then, in an eerily good impersonation of Mel Gibson, crows, “They may take our lives, but they will never take … our _freedom_!”

“Very funny, I’m sure,” Vincent murmurs. “But I don’t need a comedian. I need a warrior.”

 _Now_ the cocky mask on Dean’s face slips, and Sam knows from the brief, downward dip of his brother’s eyes that Dean is beginning to wonder why they left the amulet around his neck when they took everything else. If he hasn’t already been driving himself nuts worrying about it, that is.

“What do you know about gladiators?” Vincent continues into the silence.

Dean shrugs as best as he’s able in his restrained position, feigning nonchalance. “Saw the movie. Wasn’t impressed.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would have been. Still, it’s apt enough.” This time, when Vincent reaches out he goes for the amulet. As he lifts it, turning it over in his fingers, Dean’s breath catches.

“You’re going to fight for me,” Vincent explains softly. “You and that wolf of yours. And if demand is high enough—and I have no doubt that it will be, with that face—you’re going to fuck for me.”

Sam is sickened by how casually it’s said, as though Vincent is explaining the details of a corporate merger instead of discussing murder and prostitution. He can tell that Dean is losing his grip on the situation again: his breath is coming too quickly and pupils are dilated, eyes fixed on the amulet as it’s held up in front of his eyes.

“Like hell I am,” he manages.

Vincent’s smile is almost gentle. “I don’t think you understood me, Dean. I’m not giving you a choice. I’m telling you how our business relationship is going to work.”

“I understood you fine,” Dean bites out. “Answer’s still no.”

Vincent drops the amulet and steps back. With a gesture, he waves the man with the tray further into the room. At his nod, the tray is tilted so that Dean can see what it holds. Dean seems calmer now that there’s no active threat to the amulet, and although Sam can read fear in his brother’s eyes, the rest of Dean’s mask is firmly back in place.

“This where I decide whether to stay in Wonderland or not, huh, Morpheus? I think I’ll take the blue pill, thanks.”

“Not today,” Vincent corrects. “You’re not ready for it. Today you’ll be taking the red.”

Switching tactics, Dean gives Vincent his best shit-eating grin and says, “Dad always taught me to just say no to drugs.”

“Your father is dead, Dean. Your brother thinks _you_ are.”

Dean’s smile goes brittle.

“You’re alone in the world,” Vincent continues. “All alone except for an old man who sold you for the price of a new garage.”

Sam considers it for all of a second and is almost immediately filled with a hot rush of shame. He has a lot of issues with Bobby, but he can’t believe that the man they used to call ‘Uncle’ delivered Dean up to this. It just isn’t in the man’s character, and what’s more, it doesn’t make sense. Not when Bobby has been busting his ass off trying to _find_ Dean.

But Dean flinches. There’s more doubt in his eyes than certainty as he says, “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Vincent asks, lifting the red syringe from the tray. Dean tracks the needle with his eyes while Vincent continues, “You’re dangerous. Always one step from slipping your leash and becoming nothing more than another monster. Out there, you were just marking time until Bobby Singer put a bullet in your brain. In here, I can take care of you: I can make sure you only hurt people who deserve it. Criminals. Murderers. Rapists. Hell, I’ll even throw in a monster or two: be good for business.” He flicks the syringe with one finger.

“He wouldn’t,” Dean insists, but he sounds even less sure than before.

“In here, he doesn’t have to worry about you. You think he _enjoyed_ having to coddle you? You don’t think he wasn’t looking for some way to get you off his hands?”

Dean doesn’t say anything, but the way he drops his eyes speaks volumes.

“I think he’s ready, Mr. Mason,” Vincent says.

Hank comes forward and takes the syringe from Vincent. Dean glances up as he approaches, expressionless. He doesn’t try to get away when Hank kneels next to him and drops a heavy hand on his shoulder. Doesn’t struggle as the needle sinks into his neck.

Dean’s eyes lose focus as the liquid is pushed into him, and his lids stutter down. Whatever the drug is, it acts fast: Hank must have hit a vein. Dean is already sweating when Hank moves away. He looks dazed.

“Wha—” Dean licks his lips and tries again. “What was that?”

“Ragnarök,” Vincent answers. At Dean’s uncomprehending blink, he continues, “Let me explain while you’re still lucid enough to understand. In a few moments, Hank is going to take your amulet off. The drug is going to help facilitate the bonding between you and your passenger.”

Dean tosses his head as best as he’s able and pants, “No.” Panic shocks in every twitch of his muscles. It’s bright in his eyes.

Sam has never seen his brother so frightened. The sight makes him clench with something like physical pain.

“Tomorrow morning,” Vincent continues, “You’ll get the blue—Gleipnir—and the wolf will go away long enough for you to pay a visit to my doctor. I want to make sure that you’re in good health. If your finger is still injured by then, he’ll tend to it.”

“Don’t do this,” Dean begs. He’s shaking uncontrollably, and Sam can’t tell if it’s from fear or the drug.

“After your check up, we’ll have another talk. Then you’ll get your decision: blue or red. Gleipnir or Ragnarök.”

Gripping the chains with both hands, Dean tries to pull free from the floor. He whips his head and the metal collar digs into his throat deeply enough to draw a thin trickle of blood. More blood runs down from his wrists.

“You stupid bastard!” he shouts. “You can’t control it. You can’t—”

“No, Dean,” Vincent interrupts loudly enough to override Dean’s yells. “ _You_ can’t control it. I don’t need to. All I have to do is point it in the right direction. Shouldn’t be too difficult to get a berserker to fight, I’d think.”

Empty syringe disposed of, Hank heads back toward Dean. Dean’s struggles redouble at his approach; his breath is coming so quickly now that Sam is surprised he hasn’t passed out. Blood streaks down his chest, coats his hands, and he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. His eyes are wide and terrified and fixed on Hank as the man reaches out and takes hold of the amulet.

“No,” Dean pleads. “Jesus Christ, don’t—no, no no no no—”

Hank yanks the amulet free and Dean’s words dissolve into a scream that rips the dream _(vision)_ open at the seams and hurls Sam back to wakefulness.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He jerks awake to a dark room with Dean’s voice still ringing in his ears. He’s covered in sweat, his head is pounding, and—and everything in the room is floating at least three feet off the ground. Sam blinks, startled, and feels something in his head relax. A low shout of startlement slips from his mouth as the bed drops, followed by everything else in the room. The sound—thud of furniture and crash of breaking lamps—is terrific and the quiet after deafening.

Running a hand through his hair, Sam struggles into a sitting position and stares at the shambles of the room. It seems ridiculous to think he’s responsible for this, but he knows different. He was dreaming about Dean, about what those bastards did to his brother, and he somehow managed to levitate the entire room.

There’s a sudden pounding on his door and then Bela’s voice, still hoarse and damaged from Sam’s hands, yells, “Sam! Are you okay?”

 _No,_ Sam thinks, and then calls back. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?” Bela asks, trying to turn the doorknob.

Sam’s glad he locked it before turning in. He doesn’t want her to see him like this. Doesn’t want her to know what he just did. He knows she could probably pick the lock if she really wanted in, but he doesn’t think she’ll risk his mood.

“I got pissed,” Sam answers, which is both the truth and so far from it that it’s laughable. Let her draw her own conclusion from that.

Bela is silent long enough that Sam begins to think she was awake: that she could tell from the extent of the noise that it didn’t come from anything as simple as a chair hurled against a dresser or a lamp dashed to the floor. Then she says, “Just remember you aren’t the one footing the bill.”

A chime sounds through the suite—a member of the Bellagio’s staff probably, come to inquire about the noise—and Bela swears. “Stay in there,” she orders. “I’ll handle this.”

Sam waits until he can hear her overly cheerful voice coming from a distance and then lays back down and stares at the ceiling. Disgusted horror from the dream still courses through him, but what he feels more than anything else is the blooming throb of hope.

His visions are mostly useless; they come and go as they please and, aside from these last few days, they’ve been mostly dormant. His ability to command demons is similarly pointless, mostly because they won’t come anywhere near him now that they know what he can do. If he could get his hands on some—as few as three, maybe—then the Arena wouldn’t be much more than a pile of dust right now and Dean would be back by Sam’s side where he belongs. The fact that that’s little more than a pipedream has been almost as frustrating as having to rely on Bela.

Tonight, though … that was like Max. Like the time Sam shoved a bookcase away from a closet door in order to save his brother.

Sam knows that he should be worried by the continual development of his power: should probably be cautious in embracing these abilities. He doesn’t know where they come from, after all. Doesn’t know what kind of damage they’re doing to his body and possibly to his soul. Scratch that: _probably_ doing to his soul. Nothing that lets him command demons can be good, and he knows that. He just doesn’t care.

This latest development doesn’t require anything to work but Sam’s mind. If he can get the telekinesis under conscious control, then he can walk into the Arena as armed as if he were carrying a gun. Maybe better armed, depending on how much he can handle at once.

Sam pushes himself out of bed with an abrupt movement and turns on the overhead light. After rummaging around in the chaos by the dresser for a minute, he finds a penny and sets it down at the foot of the bed. Then he sits with his back against the headboard, stares at the small piece of metal, and tries to find that expanding, powerful place in his mind.

By morning, his hands are shaking and his head hurts so much he can barely see, but he’s up to chairs.


	15. A Taste of Hospitality

Bela is curled up on the couch chewing on a croissant and reading the New York Times when Sam finally emerges from his room. She glances up at him and arches her eyebrow. “Well, don’t you look chipper.”

Sam knows perfectly well how he looks—dark smudges of exhaustion under his eyes, his lips pressed thin and pale with the throbbing in his head, his hair limp with sweat because he hasn’t been able to muster up the energy to shower. So yeah, he looks like crap, but that doesn’t mean he wants to hear about it.

“Fuck off, Bela,” he mutters, heading straight over to the silver serving cart set up by the window. There’s an appealing aroma of coffee coming from the thermos, and the day will look a whole lot better once he has some caffeine in him.

“Ooo,” Bela says from behind him. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Oh wait. You can’t, can you?”

Sam pauses at her words. Glances over his shoulder at her as he starts to pour out a cup of coffee. He isn’t angry. He’s too tired to be angry, and he never really knew his mother in the first place. Her loss, which hit Dad and Dean so hard, is just a fact of life for Sam. The sky is blue, ice cream is cold, Mom is dead.

No, what he feels is surprise. Bela is an amoral bitch, not to mention a sociopath, but this … well, coming from her it just seems tacky. It’s too obvious: the type of barb a seven-year-old might throw.

Her expression is mocking enough as she watches him, but Sam has learned from his brother how to read eyes, and Bela’s give her away. They’re cautious: assessing.

“Just ask,” he says, raising the mug to his lips.

The coffee is as good as he hoped: rich and dark. Despite Dean’s teasing about his girly taste in, well, _everything_ , Sam has always taken his morning cup black. Unlike his brother, who has a sweet tooth the size of Los Angeles and routinely dumps so much sugar into his coffee that Sam’s teeth ache just watching him. As he looks down at the untouched sugar bowl on the tray, his mug shakes slightly in his hand.

“Ask what?” Bela says. Her voice is light with disingenuous confusion.

“Whatever it is you’re trying to find out,” Sam answers, tearing his eyes away from the sugar and his thoughts away from his brother’s panicked screams. One of the covered plates next to the coffee pot is piled with bacon and he grabs a few strips. “Or you could keep running your mouth off about shit you don’t understand. Your choice.”

His last few words come out garbled by the bacon he pops into his mouth, but he figures that she gets the general gist. As he makes himself a plate, piling on eggs and more bacon and pancakes and some freshly diced fruit, she’s silent.

Sam isn’t usually very hungry in the morning, but suddenly he feels ravenous. His headache is dying down, too: dropping to a dull throb at both temples. From the depth of the ache in his stomach, he figures that has more to do with the bacon he ate than the pain pills he popped before he left his room.

Just another side effect of his Jean Grey impression.

“You aren’t actually going to eat all that, are you?” Bela asks when he carries his breakfast—two plates in the end, and both stacked almost ludicrously full—over to the bar.

Sam is struck by a disorienting surge of déjà vu. He asked Dean the same thing countless times, amazed by the sheer amount of food his brother could put away. Of all the times he has teased Dean about his bottomless stomach, his mind focuses on the last, less than a week before Dean ‘died’ in the fire. They were having lunch in some rundown café—Dean with a bacon cheeseburger, a bowl of chili, and a double order of fries in front of him—and Sam pulled the familiar question out, hoping for a smile.

Dean looked at him with a flat expression and said tonelessly that he was eating for two.

Sitting down with his back to Bela, Sam pokes at his eggs with his fork. Suddenly, he isn’t very hungry anymore.

After a few minutes, Bela says, “You have an appointment with Vincent at noon.”

Sam is about to ask what for and then he remembers asking for a tour when Bela introduced them. Her behavior instantly makes a hell of a lot more sense.

“You were checking to see if I could hold my temper,” Sam says without turning around. “What were you going to do if I started throwing punches?”

“Call and tell him you were too hung over to walk straight,” Bela answers smoothly. As Sam forces himself to swallow a forkful of eggs, he hears the telltale squeak of leather as she shifts on the couch. “You _do_ look a complete wreck, Sam. And it’s not like you’re the picture of self-restraint even when you’re operating at full capacity.”

“What can I say? You bring out the best in me.” His stomach rumbles as he continues to poke at his eggs, reminding him that however he’s feeling emotionally, his body is in desperate need of nourishment. Using his power burned through his energy reserves the same way running a marathon would, and it’s been a while since he ate anything substantial and kept it down.

“Or maybe you just take after your father,” Bela suggests. “John Winchester had quite a nasty reputation among you hunters, you know.”

Sam tightens his grip on his fork.

“Have you ever asked Ellen Harvelle how her husband died?”

Sam swivels in his chair and finds Bela watching him with one arm tossed over the back of the couch. He gives her a tight smile and says, “Stop fishing.”

Bela’s answering smile is as bright and false as a mannequin’s. “I’m just making conversation.”

It’s such a patent lie that there’s no point in responding. Swiveling back around, he forces himself to start eating. She leaves him in silence for a few minutes and then he hears her getting off the couch. A moment later, he can sense her standing at his elbow.

Pushing the piece of pancake he’s chewing to one side of his mouth, Sam glances up at her and mutters, “What do you want?”

Bela holds out a glass of orange juice with one hand and two small objects with the other. It takes Sam a moment to recognize the Protean charms because the way she’s holding them makes him think of Dean bringing him aspirin after one of his head splitting visions.

“Yeah?” he prods when she doesn’t say anything.

Bela shakes the hand holding the Protean charms. “You have to swallow them.”

Sam stares at her, nonplussed. Bela doesn’t seem like the type to go in for practical jokes, but there’s no way she can be serious. When she continues to hold out both glass and charms, he realizes that she _is_ serious and shakes his head with a laugh.

Just when he thought his life couldn’t get any weirder, he’s supposed to down a pair of cufflinks.

“I’m not swallowing those,” he says, and then stuffs his last forkful of egg into his mouth.

“Don’t be childish, Sam.”

Sam huffs out a breath and drops his fork. “Why the hell can’t I just wear them in my jacket? It seemed to work fine before.”

“Because,” Bela says in a tight, annoyed voice, “You behaved like a complete moron the other night and all but invited Hank Mason to a round of fisticuffs. And if you go there today, he’ll want to take you up on it, and you won’t be able to tell him no, will you?”

She had a point there. Even if Sam could think up a logical excuse not to fight, he wouldn’t use it. Not after what he saw Hank do to his brother in the dream.

Bela cocks her head. “Tell me, Sam, do you normally fight in a suit?”

Well, shit.

Eyeing the charms, he hedges, “Isn’t there some other way to—”

“They have to be in close proximity with your body. If you’d rather shove them up your ass, feel free. It’s all the same to me.”

Privately, Sam thinks that Bela’s being a little dramatic. There has to be another foolproof way to keep the charms with him. Nothing he can come up with right now, of course, but if he can just have a little time to think about it—

“Just swallow the damned charms,” Bela snaps.

“Fine.”

Sam grabs them from her before he can consider how much they’re going to hurt coming out the other end. Popping them into his mouth—metallic tang, like blood—he drains the glass of juice at one go. His brain reminds him that he’s trying to swallow hunks of metal at the wrong moment and the charms stick halfway down his throat. Grimacing, he chases the juice with the rest of his coffee and then drops his head with a grunt of relief as the painful lump slides the rest of the way down.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Bela coos.

“I hate you,” Sam mutters while staring at his half-demolished breakfast. Dean owes him big for this.

“Mmm. It’s always so nice to feel wanted,” she replies and then, changing the subject: “Have you heard from Soot yet?”

“Ash,” Sam corrects.

“Whatever.”

“ _Ash_ ,” Sam repeats more firmly. “He’s the one who’s making a rescue attempt possible; you can at least make an effort to get his name right.” Actually, when he puts it like that, Sam is going to owe Ash big time when this is over.

Bela rolls her eyes but says, “Fine. Have you heard from _Ash_ yet?”

“He e-mailed me a few hours ago. Said he has his foot in the door, but there’s a lot of information to sort through. He’ll have something for us by tonight.”

“Good.” Bela gives a short laugh. “I have to admit, I’ll be relieved when this is over. Another minute and Vincent would have strolled out from his post-coital shower and caught me red handed.”

She looks genuinely nervous just thinking about it, and Sam isn’t surprised. When he considers what he knows of Vincent Camargo, it’s a fair assumption that death would be the best Bela could hope for if he had found her with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. He doesn’t feel sorry for her. She lost the right to his compassion when she cashed Vincent’s check.

“Do I look like I want to hear the sordid details of your sex life?” he asks, and sets about clearing his second plate.

Bela is still and silent beside him; he can feel her eyes on him. Finally, she says in a soft, hesitant voice, “I _am_ trying to help here, Sam. Like I told you, I’m not the enemy.”

“No, you just work for them,” Sam grunts.

She watches him eat for a while longer, maybe hoping he’ll soften and throw her a bone, but she’s easy to ignore. Eventually, while he’s working his way through a short stack of pancakes, she gets the picture and slinks away.

Two hours later, Sam is showered and shaved and on his way back to the Arena.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Turns out that Vincent actually invited him for lunch and a tour. An elderly, clean-shaven man leads him to a room on the ground level of the Arena and leaves him there to wait.

If this is part of Vincent’s private quarters—and Sam’s almost certain that it is—then the man must have the Smithsonian’s curator for an interior decorator. Instead of photographs or pieces of art, there are artifacts hanging on the walls: Norse in origin, Sam thinks. Through the room’s three large windows, he catches glimpses of a garden that must cost a small fortune to keep watered out here in the desert. The furniture—couch and divan and coffee table and massive oak bookcase—make the lavish pieces in Dean’s room look like thrift store rejects.

Sam has a distant memory of Dean taking him to the American History Museum when Sam was five and they were in D.C. Dean probably decided on the Smithsonian because it was free, and therefore the cheapest form of distraction he could come up with, but once they were inside he was as caught up with all of the exhibits as Sam. He’d been so absorbed, in fact, that he didn’t notice Sam beginning to tire, and while his brother was busy staring at a bayonet from the Revolutionary War, Sam finally decided to take matters into his own hands.

The wooden bench set up a few exhibits away didn’t look terribly comfortable, but it was better than the floor. The alarms that went off when he ducked under the rope and sat down on it startled about two years off of his life. Worse had been Dean’s furious shouts— _gotta ruin everything, now they’ll never let us back in_ —as he pulled Sam down the stairs and out the front door.

Vincent’s couch looks a thousand times more valuable than that wooden bench, but Sam can’t help connecting the two in his mind anyway. It’s silly, but he can’t shake the feeling that if he tries sitting down a shrill klaxon will sound and someone will be sent to escort him outside.

Instead of sitting, he moves in a slow circle around the room, examining Vincent’s collection of Norse artifacts. He pauses at a shelf filled with figurines, leaning in for a closer look. The statue that caught his eye sits in the middle of the shelf, and it doesn’t match the rest of the décor: too modern, too stylized. He recognizes the hand of the unknown artist who designed both the tattoo on Dean’s back and the bedroom door in his brother’s suite.

Sam became an expert on Norse mythology two years ago as he searched for a way to get the wolf out of his brother, but even before Dean picked him up from Stanford he would have recognized the event the statue depicts. Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with world mythology would recognize it.

The tree is skeletal and twisting: all boles and clawing branches. There’s a rope slung over the largest branch, and dangling at the end of it is a bearded, one-eyed man. He hangs from his ankle, both hands crossed over his chest in the attitude of an embalmed corpse.

“Odin Allfather,” Vincent says from behind him.

Sam jumps—he was too absorbed in the statue to hear the man come in—and then forces a stiff smile on his lips. “Hanging from Yggdrasill,” he says.

“Correct.” Vincent moves up next to him, wearing a salmon pink suit and smoking a cigarette. He gestures with it and asks, “Do you mind?”

The smell of smoke makes Sam sick—reminds him too strongly of fires—but he shakes his head.

“Good. It’s a nasty habit, but I can’t seem to break myself of it.” When Vincent exhales, a stream of smoke rushes out to surround the statue of Odin in a dirty cloud. Nodding at the piece, he says, “What do you think of it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Sam answers honestly. “A little morbid, but beautiful.”

“Well, I’m not sure I like being called morbid, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

Sam glances over in startlement. “You carved it?”

“Mmm. Art is a hobby of mine.”

Vincent squints at the statue with a slight frown, maybe seeing the invisible flaws that any artist will inevitably find in his own work, maybe thinking of something else entirely. Sam doesn’t know the man well enough to say: doesn’t want to know him. But if he wants his tour, then he needs to play nice. Besides, if he’s careful and just a little bit lucky, he might be able to come out of this meeting with some useful information.

“Why Norse mythology, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, Odin … Fenrir …”

“Ah yes, our Fenrir,” Vincent murmurs.

Sam’s gut clenches with a surge of anger at the possessiveness in the man’s voice, but his bites the inside of his cheek and manages to keep his face schooled in an expression of pleasant interest.

Giving him a warm smile, Vincent gestures toward a set of French doors in the far wall. “Why don’t you step into the dining room with me? I’ll give you the entire story over lunch, and then you can have your tour, if that’s agreeable?”

“Perfect,” Sam answers.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lunch is lobster bisque and roast beef and portabella sandwiches with a glass of red wine. Sam lets Vincent steer their conversation along inconsequential paths through most of the meal and then, when things appear to be winding down, reminds him, “You were going to tell me about your fascination with Norse mythology.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Vincent blots his lips with a napkin and then lays it on the table. “It isn’t a terribly interesting story, I’m afraid. I took a class on comparative religions in college to fulfill my social science requirement. I’m not a particularly religious man, and I expected to be bored out of my mind, but as you can see, I was pleasantly surprised.”

Leaning back in his chair, he lists, “Thor and his hammer; the Well of Mimir; Odin’s twin ravens, Hugin and Munin; and, of course, Loki’s fiercest offspring.”

“Fenrisulfr,” Sam says, giving the great wolf its full name.

One side of Vincent’s mouth lifts in a smile. “Even so. I was particularly taken with the tale of Fenrir’s binding, and with the berserkergang. It took years of study before I realized that the two were connected. It’s enough to fire the mind, isn’t it? Man melded with beast to form a primal, vicious whole. Violence incarnate.” He lets out a small laugh and then adds, “Imagine my astonishment when I learned that the tales were true.”

Sam’s heart picks up speed. He’s been wondering about this ever since he learned who took Dean … and why. “How did you find him?” he asks.

Arching one eyebrow, Vincent says, “The Fenrir? Oddest coincidence: I passed him on the street one day. This must have been, oh, three years ago now. He was wearing something around his neck—a kind of sigil.”

 _The amulet,_ Sam thinks. His blood goes cold at the idea of Dean walking around with what amounted to a billboard hanging around his neck: at the thought of Vincent seeing him, maybe offering one of his civilized smiles and getting an absent, answering nod in return.

“I thought it couldn’t be possible at first,” Vincent continues. “But I found that I couldn’t get him out of my head. Money, of course, was no problem, so I hired an investigator to find the young man and set my mind at ease. I was almost sure that it would come to nothing, but … well, here we are.”

He fishes another cigarette out from his jacket pocket and lights it. Leans back in his chair and exhales a thin line of smoke with his eyes mostly shut in enjoyment.

Sam’s thankful for the man’s distraction. He suspects that his own smile is turning a little hard—he can feel the muscles around his mouth going stiff—but Vincent is too absorbed in his post-lunch fix to notice. He won’t stay that way for long, though, which means that it’s time for Sam to shift the conversation away from Dean specifically and move into slightly safer waters.

“Why just one?” he asks.

Vincent’s eyes are as shrewd as ever when he opens them to look at Sam. “Why not two, you mean? Or three or four?”

Sam nods and Vincent smiles slightly, putting his cigarette out on the edge of his plate and gesturing for the wait staff to come clear the table.

“I tried,” he answers. “Things … didn’t go as I planned. I had to discontinue the attempt. No, our Fenrir is unique and likely will stay that way. There was one other, but I took too long to act and he died before I could safely collect him.”

 _He’s talking about Dad,_ Sam thinks with a shock. It doesn’t seem possible that Vincent can sit over there and talk so casually about enslaving all of the family that Sam has—everyone he loves—without batting an eye.

“Too bad,” he says, and his voice doesn’t sound too strained. “That would’ve been something to see.”

“Indeed,” Vincent agrees, taking a final sip of his wine before allowing the glass to be taken away. “I found something that works just as well, however. You’ll have a chance to see for yourself tonight.”

Sam hasn’t forgotten that Dean is supposed to be back in the ring tonight, but … well, he hasn’t exactly been thinking about it either. Despite the cold dread in his stomach, he manages a weak smile and a nod that feels as stiff and real as a cardboard cutout.

Luckily, Vincent isn’t paying any attention to him. He’s speaking in low tones with one of his staff, and by the time he turns back, Sam has himself under control again.

“Ready for your tour?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Arena is even larger than Sam thought. According to Vincent, there are twelve subterranean levels which house close to five hundred people. At any given time, only twenty percent of that number is made up of Vincent’s gladiatorial stable: a percentage he carefully maintains due to the dangerous nature of most of his fighters.

On their way to an elevator on the opposite side of the estate from the one Sam has been using, Vincent says, ‘When you’re housing the most vicious dregs of the world’s society, you can’t afford to be too careful.’ Looks like Dean was right on that count, then: not that it makes Sam any more comfortable with the killing. When it comes down to it, he doesn’t think it makes any difference to Dean either, no matter what his brother claims.

The rest of the Arena’s inhabitants are members of Vincent’s staff: one hundred and twenty ‘security specialists’, a hundred and thirty on the maintenance crew, a catering staff of sixty seven, twenty men and twenty women on the ‘entertainment’ staff, and all the requisite medical and training personnel necessary to keep the gladiators in fighting shape.

The first two floors are mostly devoted to the living quarters for what Sam has mentally dubbed the non-combatants: cleaning crew, wait staff, butlers, chefs, mechanics, computer specialists. The third level holds the massive kitchen and spacious cafeteria needed to feed so many people. It also houses most of the heavy machinery—boilers, water-filtration systems—that are needed for the rooms above. The fourth floor is nothing more than a fancy storage facility: a series of computerized bins filled with anything from food to spare socks to medical supplies. There’s even a walk-in freezer that’s roughly the same size as a baseball diamond.

The Arena proper is a split-level room that bridges two floors, with the balcony on the fifth and the fighting cage itself on the sixth. The rest of the fifth level is dedicated to the ‘pleasure suites’ and is home to Vincent’s entertainment staff. Which makes Sam wonder just what’s behind all of those mahogany double doors on the same level as Dean’s guest suite.

Below those rooms, and taking up the rest of the sixth floor, are an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool and track.

“We have a fitness center on the seventh sublevel,” Vincent announces as he crouches by the side of the pool with one hand trailing in the water. “But I wanted to encourage good cardiovascular health and there wasn’t room to put everything on the same floor.” He nods toward a pair of opaque sliding doors at the other end of the immense room. “Would you like a closer look at the cage?”

No. No, he really wouldn’t. It’s only going to upset him and it won’t be at all helpful in getting Dean out. But Simon Carver would jump at this kind of opportunity, so Sam forces himself to look eager and answers, “Yes.”

The sliding doors fold into the wall at the touch of a button and he’s surprised to find himself looking at an elevator car. “How many elevators do you have in this place?” he asks.

“Just the three,” Vincent tells him as they both step inside the car. “This one is specifically used to shuttle the fighters. It’s the only elevator in the building that goes all the way down to the twelfth floor, and the only one that doesn’t rise any higher than this. Safety precaution.”

The doors close behind them, and for a few moments Sam is too close to the man. Riding between floors in the second elevator was bad enough, but this is a hundred times worse: shut inside a small, unmoving box with the man he hates even more than the yellow-eyed demon. The demon, at least, had nature as an excuse: Vincent’s human. He’s not supposed to be one of the monsters.

Sam feels trapped suddenly: cornered. He stares at the back of Vincent’s head and the urge to reach into that slowly blossoming place in his mind and try to crush the man against the metal walls is almost unbearable. He can feel it responding to him, cool and dark and soothing, and then the opposite side of the car slides open with a soft whirring sound and Vincent steps out.

Sam closes his eyes for a moment, praying for control, and then follows.

A cleaning crew is hard at work in the cage, wiping down the mesh and mopping the mat. The overheads have been turned on, glaring down and illuminating everything in harsh lights so that Vincent’s men can see what they’re doing. Even from the elevator door, Sam can see the blood stains on both the cage’s mat and the cement floor around it. Two shining, silver lines have been set into the floor and form an unbroken path from the elevator to the cage’s entrance.

Sam takes a deep breath and it’s a mistake. The lemon of whatever they’re using to clean is strong on the air, but underneath that smell there’s a reek of copper and the piss-soaked scent of death that no amount of disinfectant is going to remove. Taking shallower breaths through his mouth, Sam steps out of the elevator and after Vincent.

“Triage,” Vincent says, gesturing to a first aid station tucked into a corner where none of the audience would be able to see it even if the lower staging area were lit during the fights. When Sam turns his head, he sees that the opposite wall is lined with weapons: props for Vincent’s gladiators. And in the center of the wall, like the centerpiece of an altar to violence, are the metal collar and chain leads that Dean wears into the ring.

When Sam tears his eyes away, Vincent is watching him with a knowing smile. “Yes, those belong to the Fenrir,” he says. “It’s strictly for show, obviously. You’ve seen for yourself that he’s quite tame. We keep them up here and fit him just before the match; he isn’t fond of restraints.”

Of course he isn’t. Not after he woke naked and chained in place. Not when he was held immobile while the lock holding his sanity—his soul—in place was ripped away.

But Sam just nods and says, “Few men are,” and then they’re at the cage.

Sam is already closer than he wants to be—close enough that he can taste that stench of blood and death on the back of his tongue—but he buries himself in Simon Carver’s thoughts and hooks his fingers into the chain mesh. Leaning closer, he peers inside with what he hopes is an expression of fascination.

“Would you like to step inside?” Vincent asks, and then buzzes the cage door open without waiting for an answer.

As he steps onto the mat, Sam is fiercely glad that his growing powers don’t involve empathy. Even without the extra help, his skin is crawling. Death and pain and suffering congeal the air into a stifling weight against his skin. This is a bad place, bad enough that he can feel it: that the cleaning crew speaks in low, graveyard tones. By all rights, the cage ought to be haunted with the amount of violent, cruel deaths that it’s seen.

Come to think of it, Sam doesn’t understand why Vincent doesn’t have problems with ghosts. He can’t very well ask, though: he’s supposed to be a spoiled college boy, not a hunter.

Instead, he strolls out to the center of the mat and gazes at the rounded opening above. It’s like standing at the bottom of a fishbowl and looking up. He can see the first few rows of seats on all sides, only partially obscured by the curving dome of the cage. If the floodlights were on instead of the overheads, it would probably be impossible to see even that much: any fighter trying to squint past the brightness would blind himself.

Sam spends almost ten minutes walking around the cage with Vincent’s eyes on him. He feigns interest while nausea builds in his gut: asking trivial questions of the cleaning crew and Vincent himself, rubbing his thumb over a splotch of blood— _Dean’s? is this Dean’s?_ —on a part of the wire mesh that they haven’t gotten to yet. At the back of his head, he’s still wondering how Vincent keeps the ghosts out. Salting and burning the bodies of all the men he kills here would be a start, but the metal bars and the mat are saturated enough with blood that a spirit should have been able to ground itself to the cage.

It isn’t until they’re leaving and he catches a glint of light from the corner of his eye that he realizes how Vincent is managing it. The lines inlaid into the floor that Sam mistook for silver aren’t actually silver at all. They’re _salt_. Salt set into the floor and underneath unbreakable glass, running from the elevator to the cage and then completely ringing it. That much salt would easily dispel any spiritual energy before it had time to build.

As they return to the elevator to continue their tour, Sam is filled with a newfound respect for Vincent’s intelligence. They’ve been treating him like a dangerous person, of course, but for the first time Sam feels that he’s getting an idea of what they’re up against. To have ferreted out Dean’s secret is impressive enough, but to have figured out a way to build all of this: to protect his investment not only from human threats but supernatural ones as well …

 _We’re going to have to kill him._

It isn’t as though Sam hasn’t been planning on doing that anyway, but for the first time he’s accepting the fact that he and Dean won’t have any peace while Vincent is still alive. Even if they manage to escape and run to the other side of the globe, the man will find them. And this time when he brings Dean back, it will be hobbled by chains and with Sam’s ashes in a small, black box.

Sam is still floored by his new understanding of Vincent’s capabilities when the elevator door swings open again on the seventh level.

Vincent ushers him out with a grin and a showman-like gesture of his arm, announcing, “And our last stop: the Gymnasium.”


	16. A Demonstration

The room is huge, running the length and breadth of the building. The elevator has let them out on one of a series of interconnected catwalks running at least thirty feet above the floor. Guards with long-barreled guns slung over their shoulders patrol the walks while keeping careful eyes on the floor below.

When Sam peers over the side of the railing, he sees that the room has been divided into different areas. To the far right are a number of weight machines; next to them are banks of stationary bikes and Stairmasters. A massive blue mat covers the center of the floor, separated into white squares with red circles inside of them. Men spar inside those circles, overseen by trainers who bark rebukes and suggestions. Just to the left of the mat, where the wood floor resumes, lies an open area where fighters practice with weapons that are probably blunted or fashioned from wood. And at the far end of the Gymnasium sits a scale model of the cage, although this version is unfinished: a curved ring of walls with no top.

“I thought you said there were twelve floors,” Sam says, scanning the floor for his brother.

“There are. Unfortunately, the lower levels are off-limits to anyone but staff. Security reasons.” Vincent steps next to Sam and lays his hands on the rail. “The only exception is the Fenrir’s guest suite.”

“Why’s that?” Sam asks. His heart skips as he catches sight of a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man jogging onto the mat and then slows again. The build is the same, but he doesn’t move right, and there’s no tattoo on his back.

“He’s not allowed above Level Six,” Vincent answers. Leaning on the railing with one elbow and inclining his body toward Sam, he adds, “Actually, he’s not allowed above Level Nine unless he’s fighting. Too risky.”

Which means that Sam can look for his brother all he wants, but he won’t be finding him. His stomach revolts at the thought of Dean trapped under all this earth: God, he must be going stir-crazy. With the sickly taste of nausea strong in his mouth, Sam says, “I thought you said he was tame.”

“Oh, I could take him outside if I wanted,” Vincent agrees. “Let him run around a bit. I’m ninety nine percent certain he wouldn’t try anything. But there’s no point in taking any chances. Besides, he makes a tempting prize. I can’t have people throwing their lives away trying to steal my property: piles up the paperwork.”

Despite the joking tone to his final words, Vincent’s eyes are intent: his face serious. That wasn’t idle conversation: that was a threat. If Sam weren’t too keyed up right now to have any kind of normal reaction, he’d be breaking out into a cold sweat. His heart hammers against his ribcage as he laughs; he’s amazed how easy it sounds.

“Oh man, I’d feel sorry for anyone who tried that. Everything else aside, he’s a handful.” Shaking his head, he leans on the railing. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a hell of a time, but it’s a little like playing with fire, isn’t it?”

Vincent studies him long enough that Sam has begun to think that he doesn’t just suspect but _knows_ : that he’s toying with Sam like a cat with a broken-winged canary. Then his expression thaws with the suddenness of the sun coming out from behind a heavy layer of clouds, and he smiles. “A bit, I suppose. He’s worth the effort, though.”

Sam snorts. “Better you than me.”

Vincent gives an absent nod: a motion that declares the subject closed. Stepping back from the railing, he gestures Sam past him. “Would you like to go down for a better look?”

Sam has lost interest in the tour now that he knows he isn’t going to see any of the important bits, but he feigns eagerness anyway. No point in screwing up Simon Carver’s image now. Especially not when he’s already been inside the cage: walked over faded bloodstains on the mat.

The metal staircase they take down lets them out at the base of the wall closest to the weights. There are more guards on the floor, and four of them take up protective flanking positions as they walk through the benches. Men glance up from their routines as they pass, and this close Sam can see what look like prison tattoos on most of them: ink too clumsy and ragged to have been done professionally.

Vincent’s gladiators are a mishmash of race and size, although they all seem to be in top physical condition. The snatches of conversation Sam catches as he passes is a confused babble of tongues, and many of the men seem to be stuck communicating with each other with the universal ‘fuck you’ symbol of hostility.

“Where did you get them all?” Sam asks, avoiding the aggressive glare of a particularly large man with dark skin and startling blue eyes.

“South America, Asia, Africa … I even have one or two from Europe, although it’s more difficult to arrange an extraction from that area. One of my men monitors judicial records around the world. We look for those convicted of particularly violent crimes, and then run a crosscheck with any medical records. If a candidate looks promising, I’ll send an agent to make a more thorough inspection. Maybe one in ten will pass inspection, at which point I begin to make arrangements.”

By now they’ve drawn up to the edge of the blue mat, and Vincent pauses there. Sam stops next to him, watching the closest pair of fighters circle each other. It only takes him a few moments to realize that, although both men are roughly the same size, the blond is vastly outmatched by his opponent. It isn’t skill: it’s the way that the man is moving. He just seems a little faster, a little …

Sam catches a gold glint in the man’s eyes and his breath hitches. When he turns, Vincent is watching him.

“He’s …”

“A berserker? Yes.”

Sam looks back at the man: watches him more carefully. There’s something about the way he moves that is naggingly familiar. After a moment, Sam asks, “What is it?”

“Cobra.”

Sam sees it in sudden clarity. The way the man holds his head: the sharp, darting movements. As he watches, the berserker darts forward, snakes his hand inside the blond’s guard, and catches him across the face with a sharp, open-handed slap.

“Point!” the berserker crows.

“Yeah, yeah,” the blond grunts, rubbing his jaw. They separate a few feet and drop into fighting stances again.

“I thought you said that—” _Dean_ , Sam almost says, and catches himself at the last moment. “—the Fenrir was the only one.”

“He’s the only _true_ berserker,” Vincent corrects. “The rest are just pale imitations.”

Sam already knows that of course, but he feigns confusion because he isn’t supposed to. And also because he wants to know just how far Vincent’s studies have taken him.

“I don’t understand,” he lies.

Vincent eyes him for a long moment, making Sam wonder if he fucked up—if maybe Vincent heard the hesitation of his almost-slip on Dean’s name. Then the man strokes his fingers down his beard and murmurs, “Why not?”

“Why not what?” Sam says, no feigning his confusion this time.

Vincent claps him on the back and he resists the urge to flinch away from the touch. Even though there are two layers between his shoulder and Vincent’s hand, Sam’s skin crawls in revulsion.

“I’ll show you the difference between _that_ —” Disdain distorts Vincent’s normally pleasant voice into something nasty. “—and a true berserker, if you’d like.”

One of their chaperones—a man with an honest-to-God cleft chin and wavy brown hair—clears his throat and says, “Mr. Camargo, that might not be the best idea.”

Vincent’s eyes are cold as they turn on Cleft Chin.

The man goes pale but continues, “The men—they don’t like it. It scares them.”

‘It’ being Dean. ‘It’ being Sam’s _brother_.

“They _should_ be scared,” Vincent says with a hint of satisfaction. “He’ll be the death of them …that is, if they make it that high in the rankings before someone else does the job.”

Cleft Chin licks his lips and tries again. “Last time you put it in with them, it took them over a month to settle down.”

“I’m not asking for your permission, Mr. Henley. Now, call Mr. Mason and tell him to bring the Fenrir to the Gymnasium. We’re going to give Mr. Carver a little demonstration.”

Cleft Chin still looks unhappy with the situation, but he either isn’t brave enough or stupid enough to risk going against a direct order. Sam watches him trot toward what looks like an intercom box on the wall and then turns his attention back to Vincent.

“Not that I don’t appreciate it, but why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s in my best interest to keep Bela happy, and right now what makes Bela happy is entertaining you.” Vincent sweeps a calculating gaze over his gladiators. “Besides, it does them good to see what they’ll eventually go up against. I think a little fear can be very motivational. Perhaps I’ll make this a monthly exhibition.”

 _You don’t have a month left with him, you son of a bitch,_ Sam thinks, but schools his face into an excited expression. He keeps the mask firmly in place as Vincent turns to whistle over one of the trainers: there are too many eyes on him to let his guard drop for even a moment.

The man who jogs over has the open, good-natured smile of a kindergarten teacher. He seems far too boyish to be involved in something like this, but Sam has no doubts that he’s as much of a bastard as the rest of them. How did that quote go again? _‘The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape’?_

“Mr. Camargo! What can I do you?”

“Who’s closest to Odin status?”

Sam is surprised into a short laugh and Vincent tosses him a smile. Sam has no doubt that Vincent is referring to some kind of ranking system among his gladiators. He probably tells them that Odin is the war god, the Allfather.

What he most definitely does _not_ tell them, in his own bit of gallows humor, is that at the end of the world, when Ragnarök comes, the great wolf Fenrir is destined to devour the father of the gods whole.

“Basu,” the boyish trainer answers without hesitation. “He’s got another two weeks of work left, tops, before he’s good to go.”

Vincent’s smile turns predatory. “Put him in the cage. We’re having an exhibition.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Basu turns out to be a short, Indian man with a twisting scar down one cheek and a tiger tattoo—professional, not prison-make—on his throat. When Sam catches the soft gleam of gold in the man’s eyes, he doesn’t have to wonder what kind of beast is in there peering out at him. Basu doesn’t appear to be worried about the coming exhibition, and Sam can’t figure out if it’s because no one told him who he’s going to be fighting or if the man is just that confident.

“Afternoon, ladies!”

Hank’s voice sets Sam’s teeth on edge, souring the pleasant smile he’s been wearing for the past fifteen minutes. He turns from watching Basu pace, bringing his attention across the room to the stairs he and Vincent came down a little over half an hour ago. The low murmur of conversation in the Gymnasium rises briefly and then dies out as the gladiators see who Hank’s herding in front of him.

From this far away, Sam can’t make out details, but he recognizes the rangy grace of Dean’s movements. A path opens before his brother as they cross through first the weights and then the Stairmasters, and then Dean is stepping onto the mat and is close enough for Sam to see clearly.

His brother’s hair is wet, as though they pulled him out of the shower. He’s wearing a ratty pair of sweatpants and sandals. Nothing around his neck for once, and for a moment Sam can block out everything else and pretend Dean is free.

Then his brother brushes past a man who was standing frozen almost in his path. The man lets out an undignified noise of panic and jerks back, all but running to the edge of the mat.

Dean’s gaze doesn’t lift from his own feet, but the set of his shoulders goes stiff. With his senses as finely tuned as they are, he must be feeling the weight of all those eyes: every single man in the room staring at him as he moves. He has to be able to smell the sour fear, and the hostility.

Dean has always prided himself on his ability to get along with other people; unlike Sam, he genuinely _likes_ just about everyone he meets, as much as he’d never admit to it. This kind of response has to be killing him, even if it is just a room full of cons.

Sam knows the moment his brother realizes that he’s here because Dean’s gait hitches before evening out again. Dean still hasn’t raised his head, can’t have seen him yet, wouldn’t have recognized him anyway thanks to the Protean charms, and for a moment Sam can’t figure out what gave him away. Then he remembers Dean fighting blind, using his sense of smell to track his opponents, and realizes that his brother can smell him.

At least fifty feet away in a room filled with the pungent odor of a hundred sweating men and Dean is able to separate Sam’s scent from the rest of the throng.

As Dean crosses the final stretch of floor between the mat and the cage, Hank peers around him and spots Sam. His face breaks into a smile bordering on insolent and he calls, “Well, if it isn’t Harvard!”

“Manners, Mr. Mason,” Vincent says, but his tone is indulgent and Hank just rolls his shoulders in a loose shrug as he and Dean draw to a stop.

Dean finally raises his eyes, less than three feet away and as distant as the moon. He doesn’t so much as glance at Sam, focusing intently on Vincent instead. Stepping forward, Vincent puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and rubs his skin the way a man might caress his favorite horse.

Sam’s vision whites out in a single, rabid _Mine_. He digs his nails into the palm of his hand to keep himself from charging Vincent right here and now: getting himself shot by one of the thirty-odd guards before he got more than a punch in, more likely than not. When the suicidal urge to tear the man apart with his own hands fades, Vincent is still touching his brother.

“You remember Simon Carver, don’t you?” Vincent says, nodding toward Sam.

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“Say hello,” Vincent prods.

Dean’s eyes flicker vaguely in Sam’s direction without actually landing on him. “Hello, sir,” he says tonelessly.

Vincent’s hand strokes out of view, trailing back over the place Sam knows the tattoo lies. Sam can read the implicit ‘good boy’ in the gesture and wants, desperately, to puke. The rich lunch Vincent fed him shifts alarmingly in his stomach.

“I’m giving Simon a tour and he was curious about the difference between our Fenrir and the rest of these mongrels. I’d like you to show him.”

Dean lifts his gaze to Basu, waiting for him in the cage. His mouth tightens but he doesn’t say anything.

“There’s no point in killing him without an audience, but I don’t want you holding back, either. Give us a show.”

Dean’s jaw gives a single clench and then he grunts, “Yeah, sure.”

Kicking off his sandals, he steps toward the cage. There’s no mechanical door on this practice arena: just a gate that Dean swings open and then latches shut behind him. All of Basu’s confidence is gone as Dean walks toward him, and his face is twisted into an expression of mingled hate and fear. He flinches when Dean comes to a stop a few feet away. Pales further at Dean’s self-deprecating smile.

“Come on, man,” Dean says. “Gimme your best shot.”

Basu hesitates, eyes darting from the door of the cage, to Vincent, to the guards with their guns, and back to Dean again. Then, letting out a slow breath, he squares his shoulders.

When he rushes forward, the attack is inhumanly fast. Basu’s speed doesn’t do him any good, though: the punch he throws passes through empty space.

Sam blinks, surprised, because Dean was right there a second ago, and now he’s standing behind Basu, and Sam didn’t see him move.

While Basu frowns in confusion, Dean leans forward and taps him on the shoulder. Basu spins, throwing a right hook that sails harmlessly through the space where Dean isn’t anymore.

Sam’s chest tightens as he watches what isn’t a fight but a lesson in superiority. Dean is nothing more than a blur unless he’s dropping light slaps on Basu’s body, and occasionally he seems to disappear entirely. In the brief pauses when he’s clearly visible, his eyes burn brighter than Sam has ever seen them, gold and alien and almost painful to look at. Dean is toying with Basu, winding him up until he’s too frustrated to be frightened and dragging enraged shouts from his throat.

“ _That’s_ the difference,” Vincent murmurs from Sam’s shoulder.

Sam starts. He forgot that the man was there, that anything existed beyond his brother moving too quickly for the human eye to follow: a force of nature instead of a man. When he swallows, his tongue feels clumsy and swollen.

“He’s so damned _fast_ ,” he breathes.

Vincent nods. “We have him slow down for the Arena. It isn’t much of a show if you can’t follow the action.” Then, raising his voice, he calls, “Stop fucking around and hit him!”

The blur that’s Dean streaks toward Basu and in the next instant the man is flying through the air and crashing into one of the cage walls. Dean comes to a stop as Basu groans on the mat. His gaze is steady while he waits for his opponent to get back up. It’s the longest he’s stayed still since the fight began, and Sam notices that his brother isn’t breathing hard: doesn’t look like he’s even broken a sweat.

For the first time, Sam is getting a good look at the thing Dean has become, and it’s terrifying. Terrifying and breathtaking and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life.

As Basu drags himself back to his feet using the links of the cage wall, Dean swivels his head toward Vincent. There’s no expression on his face, and Sam realizes that he’s looking for instructions. Vincent’s perfectly obedient fighting machine.

“Don’t kill him,” Vincent says.

Dean doesn’t, but Sam thinks that it might have been kinder if he had. His brother spends the next twenty minutes toying with Basu with casual cruelty: drawing blood and breaking bones and then easing off long enough for Basu to get to his feet again.

Eventually, the man tries to tap out. Dean snaps his wrist and then, while Basu wails in pain, stands with one foot digging into those fragile, broken bones.

“He’s done,” he announces, looking out at Vincent.

“ _I_ decide when he’s done,” Vincent responds sharply. Stepping closer to the cage, he turns his attention on Basu and growls, “Get the fuck up or I’ll let him kill you.”

‘Let’ him. As if Dean wants to do it and Vincent is the only thing stopping him. No wonder these men are so frightened of him.

Sam isn’t sure how Basu manages it—one of his legs is mangled and useless, his left shoulder juts out at an awkward angle, and now he’s out his right wrist as well—but he somehow hauls himself to his feet. He’s standing for all of second before Dean slams into him, knocking them both onto the mat. Even over the thud of impact, Sam catches the by-now familiar sound of snapping bone. Basu’s screams turn wet.

Dean is up and off of the man in less than a second, but the damage has already been done. Turning his head to one side, Basu coughs up blood, shockingly red on his lips and chin. Sam doesn’t need a medical degree to know that at least one of the ribs Dean just snapped is piercing the man’s lungs.

“Now he’s done,” Vincent says with satisfaction, and then nods to one of the guards. “Get one of the trauma team up here and take care of that.”

Hank chuckles behind Sam. “Gets your blood up, doesn’t it?” he asks. When Sam glances back, the man’s grin twists into a leer. “Or maybe it gets something else up. Bet you’re wishing it was tonight, huh?”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Sam bites out, turning to face him fully. He can feel Vincent watching—can feel _Dean_ watching—but he can’t let himself think about that. He’s Simon Carver, he reminds himself. Simon Carver, who grew up in a privileged world and won’t take shit like this from the help.

The fact that he’s really Sam Winchester and would like nothing more than to beat the crap out of the sadistic asshole in front of him is just window dressing.

“Maybe I just don’t like spoiled brats who think they’re hot shit just because some prissy school let them into the club house,” Hank says.

It occurs to Sam, distantly, that Vincent is letting Hank do this. Vincent maybe even put him up to it. Bela was right: Vincent doesn’t trust her. And, by extension, he doesn’t trust ‘Simon Carver’. Wants to see what Sam is made of so that he can appropriately gauge the threat.

Well, if that’s what the man is after, then Sam is more than happy to let Vincent see him fight. He wouldn’t mind showing them that he isn’t someone to be fucked around with, and there’s no way that this will adequately prepare Vincent for what he’s truly capable of now that his powers are waking up.

Besides, Hank’s right: after Dean’s little ‘show’, his blood _is_ up. Just not for the reasons Hank thinks it is.

“Well?” Hank prods. “You gonna do something about it, Harvard?”

The trauma team Vincent mentioned before is sprinting across the floor toward the cage, but Sam ignores the commotion. Turning to Vincent, he asks, “Do you mind?”

If he had any doubts left that Vincent is behind this, then they’re gone now. Vincent’s expression is too calm: his eyes too shrewd.

“Be my guest.”

Sam shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it carelessly on the floor. He has a brief moment of thankfulness that Bela thought this far in advance and then unbuttons his shirt as well. Hank is already striding toward the blue mat, half-stripped and pulling his undershirt off. Sam follows. At the edge of the mat, he takes his shoes and socks off and places them in a pile with his shirt.

Dress pants aren’t the best thing to wear in a fight, but Sam figures he can take Hank even with the handicap. The man is built, sure, but there’s a layer of fat over his muscles. The insulation will make him harder to hurt, but it will also slow him down. Sam, on the other hand, spent a year sparring with Dean, and although his brother wasn’t anywhere near as fast as he is now, he was still damned quick. It’s been a while, but Sam is fairly confident that he still has the muscle memory from those exercises in humiliation.

“How’re you enjoying our boy?” Hank asks as Sam joins him on the mat. “Sweet as honey, ain’t he?”

If Sam gets a chance, he’s going to break that smug smile wide open.

“Are we fighting or are you just going to run your mouth?”

Hank rushes him without warning and Sam just manages to stumble back in time to dodge a powerful swing at his cheek. Dancing away, Sam eyes the man with new caution. Hank may be a loud-mouthed bastard, but he’s also a professional. Sam’s preoccupation with Dean—his anger over what these bastards are doing to his brother—made him forget that, but he’s sure as hell being reminded of it now. Not that it’s going to make a difference in the end.

Sam’s muscles sing with the relief of finally doing something; his chest is light with the chance to pay these bastards back a little for what they’re doing to Dean. Just as it always does when he’s fighting, his mind goes clear and still as the clouding emotions are drained away by adrenaline. All of Sam’s attention is focused on Hank: marking the twitch of his muscles, learning the tells that will let him know him how the man is going to move.

John taught him to be a conservative fighter, a lesson he never managed to sink into Dean, and Sam uses that restraint now. He folds with the few punches that Hank manages to drive into his chest and stomach: ducks away from the rest without trying to get his own hits back in. Hank is taunting him, but Sam can’t hear the words. All of his focus is on the man’s left shoulder.

Hank has an old injury there: a scar that cords through the muscle, making him weak. As the fight goes on, he drops that shoulder more and more: telegraphs any punches he’s going to throw by pulling it up again. Sam spares himself a private smile as the knowledge clicks.

 _Gotcha_ , he thinks, and slows long enough for Hank to close with him again. When the man’s shoulder lifts, Sam ducks. The right hook that meant to drop him on the mat passes harmlessly over his head instead. Straightening before Hank can recover, Sam drives his own fist up into the man’s jaw. He hears Hank’s teeth click together—hopes the bastard bit his own tongue off—and then follows up with a left cross without thinking. The punch spins Hank’s body a little to the side and Sam dives into the opening, gripping Hank’s shoulder with one hand to keep him steady and driving swift little rabbit punches into his kidney.

After a few moments, Hank manages to break free and lumbers away at a swift, awkward gait. When he glances over his shoulder at Sam, there’s new respect in his eyes.

They circle each other for a few minutes. Hank’s pain is making him cautious, but Sam knows that won’t last. Sam’s already been waiting for this for six months. Hank doesn’t have that kind of patience.

When he finally rushes forward again, Sam’s ready for him. He steps aside at the last minute, twisting to deliver a side kick to Hank’s ass. He doesn’t connect very hard, but it’s enough to overbalance the man and send him crashing to the mat. And the humiliation factor is pretty damned satisfying.

Hank’s pissed when he pushes back to his feet, face flushed and red. If he’s been holding back at all, he won’t be anymore. He starts toward Sam, a nasty smile twisting his face into something verging on inhuman, but Vincent’s voice interrupts them before the fight can go any further.

“I think that’s enough,” he says.

The look Hank shoots him is equal parts embarrassment and rage. “Did you see what he—”

“It’s over,” Vincent repeats, his eyes steady. Hank glowers at him for a few moments and then, with obvious effort, forces himself to relax.

Sam lowers his own guard, half-regretful that Hank didn’t ignore the order. Humiliating the man was satisfying, but breaking a few bones would have been even better. Maybe Sam could snap that half-healed nose for him again.

“I want you to take the Fenrir back to his cage and get him cleaned up,” Vincent orders.

At the reminder, Sam looks for his brother. Dean is standing by the edge of the mat. The guards and gladiators who were also watching the match have given him an obvious, wide berth. When Sam meets his brother’s eyes, Dean’s expression is as blank as ever, but his posture is radiating something close to panic.

In his current amped state, the obvious concern only pisses Sam off. Dean should know by now that he can take care of himself in a fight, damn it. Especially against someone as cocky as Hank.

He tears his gaze from his brother as Vincent strolls onto the mat, holding out his shirt and jacket. Sam accepts them with a smile he knows doesn’t reach his eyes.

“You’re very good,” Vincent notes as Sam pulls his shirt back on.

“Thanks,” he grunts. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Hank walking Dean back toward the stairs. Hank is walking too close to his brother, and Sam’s anger takes a sudden dip as he wonders if the man is going to take his thwarted fury out on Dean. If he does, every bruise he leaves is going to come out of his own hide tenfold.

“If you ever get tired of playing the companion for Bela,” Vincent says, “I might have a job opportunity for you.”

 _I’d bend over for that yellow-eyed son a bitch first,_ Sam thinks, but what he says is, “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”


	17. In the Cage

It’s nearing four o’clock when Vincent finally leads Sam back aboveground, and he invites him to stay for dinner, considering the late hour. Sam begs off with the excuse that he wants to wash and change before tonight and Vincent lets him go with a smile and a wave. Sam spends the ride back replaying the afternoon’s fights in his head, but what his mind keeps circling around to, as always, is Dean.

God, the way he _moved_.

Sam thought he understood the difference between normal berserkers and his brother before, but he knows now that he was just fooling himself. He had no fucking clue what Dean was capable of. Which begs the question yet again: why change the ritual? It doesn’t make any sense.

When the limo finally pulls up in front of the Bellagio, Sam bounds out and all but dashes through the lobby. He needs to call Bobby and pick his brain: find out if the man can think of a reason for the change. He fidgets the entire elevator ride up. He’s so goddamned close to whatever’s been bugging him about the mess: the answer clumsy and annoying at the tip of his tongue.

Turns out he doesn’t need to call Bobby at all because the man is already in the suite with Bela, both of them sharing the couch and hunched over Bela’s laptop. Seeing Bobby willingly pressed that close to Bela makes Sam stumble to a stop. He stares at them, uncomprehending, and calls, “Hey.”

Bela just waves a hand over her head, but Bobby twists around to look at Sam and says, “That squirrelly son of a bitch came through.”

Suddenly their closeness doesn’t seem that strange at all.

Sam hurries over to the couch and leans over the back to peer at the screen. “What’re we looking at?” he asks.

“Blueprints.” The ‘moron’ is implied in the tone of Bela’s voice.

Sam’s too relieved that Ash’s plan actually worked to be bothered. “I can see that,” he says dryly. “What level?” Then he catches the label _sub kitchen 1_ on one of the rooms on the screen and continues, “Never mind, I figured it out. Go down to eight: everything above that I’ve seen.”

“And?” Bobby prods.

“You can look it over later, but I’m pretty sure we’ll end up bypassing it. They’re keeping Dean somewhere on the lowest levels.” He stretches forward and is able—barely—to reach the keyboard. Ash sent everything neatly labeled, and when Sam clicks on the file titled Blueprint L8, it comes up immediately.

As he tries to make sense of the boxes and lines on the screen, Bela says, “I assume it went well, then?”

“I didn’t try to strangle Vincent, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sam responds absently, and then, “This is some kind of barracks, I think. Either of you know what the squiggly lines are?”

The lines he’s talking about run through most of what he assumes are doors, and as he points at one Bobby reaches for the keyboard himself.

“Kid sent a key,” he mutters. He scrolls through the files until he finds the one he wants and then opens it. The squiggly lines turn out to be the symbol for electronic locks, and Sam’s head fills with images stolen from a hundred prison break movies that he watched with his brother.

“You think he’s got Dean there?” Bobby asks.

“No,” Sam answers.

“Any particular reason why not?”

 _Because the rest of the fighters are scared shitless of him and if they tried putting him in with them, Vincent would have a riot on his hands._

But what Sam says out loud is: “Dean’s not allowed above level nine unless he’s fighting.”

“Let’s see what’s on level nine, then,” Bela says, and pulls up the appropriate blueprint. This time, it’s Bobby who figures it out.

“Medical facility,” he grunts, and opens the next file.

The tab at the top of the image reads SL9, and the blueprint itself looks completely different from the others. After a few moments of study, Sam realizes why.

“Those are pipes, aren’t they?” he says, tracing one of the lines with a finger. “Plumbing, or maybe heating vents?”

“Must be,” Bela agrees dismissively, and opens the next file labeled L10.

Sam can tell at first glance that it’s another barracks, but these rooms aren’t locked. “Security barracks,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Bela asks, scrutinizing the blueprint.

“Yeah. They aren’t being housed on the first two floors with everyone else. Besides, if I were Vincent, I’d want my guards as close to what they’re guarding as I could get them.”

Scowling at the computer screen, Bobby grunts, “That doesn’t make a lick of sense. You want to keep someone in, you get between them and the exit. What kind of moron puts the prisoners closer to the front door than the guards?”

“They aren’t guarding Vincent’s gladiators,” Sam says. “They’re guarding Dean.”

Bobby’s glance is incredulous. “That sounds a little like nuking an anthill, Sam.”

In his mind, Sam sees Basu trying to fight Dean. Unable to touch him or so much as track his movements. Sees Dean put on those extra little bursts of speed that left him all but invisible to the naked eye.

“It isn’t overkill,” he says. He can feel both Bela and Bobby looking at him and keeps his own eyes steadfastly on the computer screen.

After a moment, Bobby says, “If that’s true, Sam, then what the hell is Dean waiting for? Why does he need us at all?”

 _He’s waiting because he needs the drug,_ Sam thinks, and then realizes that doesn’t answer Bobby’s question. If Dean is so powerful—and he is, Sam has no doubts on that score—then all that Sam really needs to do is convince his brother that they can take care of him once he gets out. Let Dean carve his path to freedom himself.

But Bela is laughing. “Oh please,” she says. “You don’t think Vincent knows his men are useless?”

“Why have them there then?” Sam asks her.

“Because they can shoot,” comes the disdainful answer. Bela taps a nail against the screen. “Look how thin the corridors are. Line three men across and they’re bound to hit whatever’s coming at them, no matter how fast it’s moving. And I can guarantee that the corridors on the lower levels are even smaller.”

After what Sam saw, he isn’t sure that Dean couldn’t dodge a couple of bullets. Then again, with the amount of men Vincent has working for him, Dean would probably mess up before he worked his way to the surface. Moving that quickly has to take a great deal of energy, and Dean would be forced to slow down eventually.

“I thought this Vincent wants Dean alive,” Bobby points out. “I’d think putting holes in him would be problematic.”

“Not bullets,” Bela corrects, “Tranquillizer darts. They’re filled with a sedative specifically designed to work on Dean’s metabolism. A single dart packs enough of a punch to put him down for two hours.”

“We’ll need to get them out of the way, then,” Sam says.

“I have an idea that might do the trick.” Bela brings up the eleventh and twelfth levels of the Arena, maneuvering the windows so that the blueprints are both visible at the same time, one on top of the other.

“What sort of ‘idea’?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Bela murmurs, frowning at the screen. “Who the hell designed this?”

Unlike the Arena's upper levels, the eleventh floor is a twisting warren of narrow hallways that double back on themselves and end in abrupt dead ends for no apparent reason. There are doors that don’t lead anywhere, doors that open up onto other hallways, and only six real rooms on the entire level, five of which are connected in a clump at the opposite side from the elevator.

“That’s gotta be the guest suite,” Sam says. Bobby gives him a curious glance and he explains awkwardly, “You know, where they take Dean when he’s … entertaining.”

Bobby’s face goes tight with pain, but he only nods and points at the other room. “What’s that?”

“Yggdrasil,” Sam says. It has to be.

“What?” Bobby asks, and Bela looks up at Sam sharply.

“That’s what’s written on the door. Vincent has a thing for Norse mythology.”

The twelfth, and lowest, floor is divided into two parts, one of which seems to be a small-scale version of the gym on level seven. The other half of the floor is another series of cells, each with the squiggly mark over the door. These are less than half the size of those above, though, and each room is marked with a small, black triangle that Ash’s key says represents a camera.

Vincent keeps Dean in one of those rooms: possibly the same one Sam saw in his dream last night. He has no idea what the rest of the cells are used for. Maybe it’s Vincent’s version of a needle in a haystack: just another attempt to keep Dean hidden from any attempts to rescue him. Or maybe they’re the empty, hopeful remainders of Vincent’s attempts to get himself a few more like Dean.

For some reason, though, as Sam stares at those banks of rectangles, he thinks, _Yggdrasil_. The Norse World Tree is meant to be a warm, living thing that spans all the worlds, but its name is cold and black in Sam’s mind. Just thinking it fills him with a creeping dread.

“Bobby,” he says suddenly, chasing after the feeling. “Why did they change the berserker ritual?”

Bela shoots him a glance halfway between coy and annoyed, and then goes back to studying the blueprints. Bobby turns around with a frown and reaches up to tug at the cap he isn’t wearing. When he realizes what he’s doing, he drops his hand back into his lap with a grimace.

“I’m not sure,” he answers. “I started looking around after Dean picked up the wolf, but I never did find an explanation. All I know for sure is that sometime around the fall of the Roman Empire, people just stopped using the original ritual.”

“You don’t have any guesses?” Sam presses. “Anything?”

“Well,” Bobby says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “The altered ritual is a hell of a lot faster. ‘Stead of sending up a beacon and waiting for the right animal spirit to come along, it puts a direct call in to the one you want. Takes a few seconds at most.”

Sam remembers his dream: the ritual complete, the would-be berserker's tribe departing to wait in their huts. “The original ritual took longer,” he says slowly. God, it’s right in front of him and he still can’t see it.

“Days usually,” Bobby agrees. “So I suppose if I had to I’d guess that folks got impatient.”

“If you saw him, if you saw what he's capable of ...” Sam shakes his head. “You’d wait a hell of a lot longer than a few days for something like that.”

“Well, what then?” Before Sam can answer, Bobby adds, “And why’s it got you so worked up?”

Sam presses his lips together and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t _know_ ,” he says, frustrated. “But it’s important. And it has to do with Yggdrasil.”

Scrunching his face up in confusion, Bobby asks, “What does the berserker summoning ritual have to do with the Tree of Life?”

“Not the tree, the _room_ , it—it’s black.” God, _Sam_ doesn’t even understand what he’s saying. One of his hands drifts to his temple. He can feel that deep, powerful place in his mind pulsing darkly.

“Black?” Bobby repeats doubtfully.

“Black,” Sam affirms. “It’s—”

 _(Ygg)_

“—all—”

 _(dra)_

“—black.”

 _(sil)_

“What the hell does that even _mean_?” Bobby asks.

“I don’t know!” Sam shouts, making Bobby and Bela both jump. Taking a step away from the couch, he gives his temple one last rub of his thumb and drops his hand again. Then he lets out a sharp, frustrated sigh, and tersely continues, “All the pieces are right there in front of me, and it’s important, I _know_ it is, and I can’t figure it out!”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait,” Bela announces as she stands. “We have to leave for the Arena in a little under a half hour if we’re going to be there in time for the show.”

Sam wants to yell that he needs more time, that she can just wait a goddamned minute while he figures this out, and then swallows his protest. He doesn’t know how Vincent would react to a tardy entrance, or if they’d even be allowed past the gate, and he doesn’t want to risk Vincent offering Dean to someone else for the night. Someone who’s actually going to be buying what Vincent’s selling.

 _What if this is more important?_ a nagging voice pipes up in the back of his head, and he presses his eyes shut. How the fuck can he even consider the possibility that there’s something more important than keeping his brother from having to service another rich fuck?

“ _Sam_ ,” Bela prods.

“Yeah, okay,” he rasps.

“Give it a rest for a few hours and then think it over again tonight,” Bobby suggests. “Maybe something’ll fall into place. No surer way not to figure something out than to keep banging your head against a wall until you’re stupid with it.”

For the first time since Bobby called and told him that Dean was still alive, Sam’s chest warms for the man. He still isn’t close to forgiving him, but he’s grateful for his calm reason. Lord knows Sam’s a little short on that himself these days.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he says, offering Bobby a wan smile.

But later that night, when they return to the suite, he has other things on his mind.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Vincent isn’t there when they arrive at the Arena, which Sam doesn’t think too much about until the first two fights of the evening are over and Dean is being given an abbreviated introduction by the regular announcer. Sam has only seen his brother fight once, but Vincent’s presence in the ring had the feel of routine. When he glances over and finds Bela frowning, his suspicion that something is wrong increases. He remembers that Vincent promised him something to rival a match between two berserkers, and fidgets in his chair.

The beginning of the match throws him off at first. The men Dean is fighting are skilled, but they don’t seem to pose any great challenge. They aren’t armed, and Dean hasn’t been handicapped in any way. He puts the first two down effortlessly—quick blows to the throat and head—and the unconscious bodies are dragged away without any input from the audience.

It isn’t until Sam has watched the same routine play out for a fifth time in less than ten minutes that he begins to realize what’s going on. Bela’s silence is thunderous beside him as Dean continues to drop his opponents, and Sam figures that she knows what’s happening as well. He can’t be sure, but he doesn’t think this is the show Vincent had in mind when they spoke earlier.

Neither Sam nor Bela speak while they watch Dean plow through Vincent’s fighters, seemingly as tireless as a machine. It isn’t until Dean’s twenty-seventh challenger that he shows any sign of weakness, allowing the man to land two solid blows to his midsection before dropping him with a spinning roundhouse kick to the head.

It’s a sign of things to come and Sam’s stomach sinks distressingly. Bela reaches over, grabs his tie, and yanks him close. To the casual observer, it probably looks like she’s busy devouring his neck, but what she’s really doing is hissing in his ear.

“What the hell did you do?”

“What do you mean, ‘what did I do’?” Sam shoots back, keeping his eyes on the new fighters entering the cage. There are three this time: Vincent knows as well as they do that Dean is finally tiring, and is circling in for the kill.

“Oh please,” Bela scoffs, releasing him and sitting back in her seat. “This—” Her gesture takes in the cage where Dean, moving noticeably slower than at the start of the night, is keeping his distance from his new opponents. “—is obviously a punishment for something. I’ve seen this type of match before. Vincent won’t stop sending opponents until he’s made his point.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much what Sam figured. Hearing it out loud brings it home in a way that his own suspicions hadn’t, though, and leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. It doesn’t help that his brother has him to thank for how quickly he’s tiring. The show that Dean put on this afternoon can’t have helped his energy reserves.

In the cage, Dean rushes forward and catches one of his current opponents square on the nose. Blood sprays out as the man topples over backwards and collapses on the mat. Sam can’t tell for sure from this far away, but he doesn’t think that the man is breathing anymore.

Dean goes still. He’s ignoring his two remaining opponents to stare at what Sam is now certain is a dead body. Dean must have driven the man’s nose right back into his brain with that blow.

The way his brother is just standing there tells Sam that Dean is as shocked and appalled as he is by what just happened. Dean has been economical with his attacks all night, looking to incapacitate instead of kill, and up until now Sam hasn’t seen him make a mistake.

He must be far closer to the end of his strength than he’s letting on.

God, how long can Dean keep this up anyway? Long enough to work his way through the hundred-odd fighters in Vincent’s stable? Probably not, and Sam doesn't think that Vincent would stop there even if Dean did make it that far. He’d throw members of his security team into the cage: maybe some of the guard dogs Sam saw patrolling the grounds on his tour earlier today.

“I don’t understand,” Sam says numbly. “Vincent wasn’t upset with him this afternoon.”

“Well, his temper has obviously changed between now and then,” Bela snaps, and winces as one of Dean’s remaining opponents rocks Dean’s head back with a right hook. Then, as if she hadn’t already made it perfectly clear that she’s blaming Sam for this mess, she shoots him a flinty glance and elaborates, “You piss Dean off, he pisses Vincent off, Vincent retaliates. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Sam thinks about his brother’s expression after his fight with Hank earlier that afternoon, and he isn’t sure that Bela’s wrong.

Guilt steals his voice for a few moments, leaving him mute as he watches his brother perform what amounts to a shadowbox with his remaining opponents. Dean should have put them down by now, but he’s being overly cautious after the mistake he just made. The two men circling him obviously sense their advantage: Sam can see them regaining their confidence: puffing up with it like adders.

“What the hell is Vincent trying to prove?” he asks when he can speak again.

“My best guess?” Bela says. “That he’s the one with all the leverage.” Then, cocking her head, she adds thoughtfully, “And the bigger cock.”

Below, Dean dodges a kick aimed at his head and backs up into his other opponent’s arms. The man grabs him, trapping Dean’s arms in a bear hug. Dean struggles, but it isn’t enough to dislodge his attacker. Sam can’t tell if his brother is just that tired or if he isn’t really trying.

The other fighter approaches slowly, rolling his knuckles ominously. Even from this distance, Sam can make out the gloating smile on the man’s face as he drives the first punch across Dean’s cheek. When Dean continues to struggle uselessly, the man’s smile widens even further and he says something Sam can’t hear. From this vantage point, he has no trouble seeing the shape of the man’s lips, though, and he can guess at some of the words: ‘whore’, and ‘cocksucker’ and ‘pretty bitch’.

It’s a mistake.

Dean twists abruptly, jerking his head back into the face of the fighter restraining him. At the same time, he leans into the man’s arms and brings his feet up to kick his other attacker in the stomach. The roar of the crowd’s approval shakes the arena as Dean is dropped. He hits the mat rolling and is up in a crouch in an instant.

The man who was holding him is too concerned with the blood rushing out of his nose to realize that Dean isn’t done with him. The kick Dean delivers to his kneecap, snapping it out of place, comes as a complete shock. Collapsing with a shrill shriek of pain, he forgets about his nose and brings his hands down to cradle his dislocated knee. Dean shifts his balance and kicks the man’s chin, snapping his head back and leaving him limp and unconscious on the mat.

Dean’s remaining opponent has only just regained his feet, and now Dean rises to face him. He waits for the man to come for him and then backs out of reach of a wild punch. Snarling, his opponent delivers a spinning roundhouse kick aimed at Dean’s head. Dean flattens himself on the mat and the kick sails harmlessly over him.

The man’s momentum carries him too far around, offering Dean his back again, and with a blur of speed Dean launches himself from the mat into the opening. He isn’t heavy enough to knock the man over, or maybe isn’t trying for it, and he ends up perched on the man’s back with his legs twisted around his waist. The man claws blindly for Dean, trying to get a grip on his arm or neck so that he can pull him off.

Ignoring the swatting hands, Dean shoves his own hand into the man’s open mouth, grabs hold of the side of his cheek, and pulls. The man’s skin rips back in a spill of red that shocks the crowd silent. With a flap of skin and muscle dangling from his face, he collapses to his knees and clutches at his ruined face with a dazed expression.

Dean drops off of the man and shoves him down onto his back. Sam doesn’t think that the man is aware of Dean’s weight as it drops back down onto him, one knee planted on either side of his hips. Then Dean snaps the man’s head to one side with a punch, slapping the flap of skin against the mat.

Maybe it’s the wet smacking sound his cheek makes; maybe the pain is finally starting to come through his shock. For whatever reason, the man finally begins to scream.

“No! Stop! My face, Jesus fuck my face!”

Or that’s what Sam guesses he’s saying. Without a whole mouth, what comes out sounds more like, “Ooo! Schooph! Eye hace, Eshush huck eye hace!”

Dean punches him again, and the noise his fist makes when it squishes the man’s ruined cheek back into place for a second is nauseating.

“Eye schorry! Eye huckee schorry, doh—”

Dean lets out a wild snarl and his punches speed. He smacks the man’s head from side to side a few more times and then switches tactics. The first blow that drives the man’s head directly down into the mat knocks him thankfully unconscious and cuts off his begging screams. Now there’s only the increasingly wet slap of Dean’s fists turning the man’s face into a red, broken pulp. Dean twists, putting his weight behind one of the blows, and the man’s forehead caves in.

He’s dead, he has to be, and Dean’s still going. There’s a pool of blood spreading out from the wreck that used to be a human head: Dean’s bare chest is spattered with it. His hands drip as they rise and fall, coated in crimson.

He doesn’t even pause at the sound of the cage opening again.

Numb and horrified, Sam watches as ten more fighters file in and take up positions in a circle around his brother. Members of Vincent’s clean up crew slip in and drag Dean’s two other opponents from the last round—one dead, one unconscious—from the cage. The door shuts again.

Although Dean is outnumbered, none of the new fighters seem to want to be the one to interrupt him. They wait silently as Dean’s punches eventually slow and finally stop. He’s panting, chest heaving, and for a moment he remains kneeling over the man’s body. What’s left of the head doesn’t look human anymore, mashed flat and wet like a pulped tomato, and Dean seems to be having trouble understanding what he’s looking at.

Sam knows the moment it hits his brother because Dean scrambles up from the body, hands twitching in disgust. He notices the men surrounding him for the first time and turns in a slow, swaying circle to survey them. His fists start to rise and then he hesitates.

Sam can’t see his brother’s face, but the slope of Dean’s shoulders is unmistakable. And in the hush that fills the arena, there’s no missing Dean’s muttered, ‘fuck it.’ He lowers his hands and raises his head.

The fighters obviously don’t believe it at first. One of the men standing behind Dean darts in and tosses a kick at the back of Dean’s knee. He’s already moving back again before it connects. The amount of force left on the kick can’t have been enough to even leave a bruise, but Dean lets it fold his knee anyway, dropping heavily to the mat.

Kneeling next to the body of the man he just killed, he looks around the circle with an expression of contempt. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

When Vincent’s gladiators continue to hesitate, Dean laughs harshly and puts his hands behind his back. “Fucking pussies.”

Tentative understanding finally ripples through the circle of men and they close in. When Dean doesn’t move, one of the bolder fighters tries another kick. This one connects solidly with the side of Dean’s face, knocking him on his side. Shaking his head, he pushes himself slowly back into a kneeling position. Waiting.

What follows isn’t anything but a systematic beating.

In the same eerie silence that reigned when Dean destroyed his last opponent’s face, Sam catches the smack of flesh on flesh. He can hear breaking bones and the harsh grunts of the men as they work. There are no screams from Dean. Aren’t even any moans of pain.

Sam’s own scream is locked in his throat, held there partly by the knowledge that if he loses it now he’ll blow their cover completely, and partly because he’s too angry and horrified to properly express himself. One of the men kicks Dean halfway out of the circle and Sam catches a rolling glint of gold underneath a mask of blood. There’s pain in that gaze, and terrible awareness, and why the hell isn’t Dean unconscious yet?

As he watches his brother dragged back into the clump of men, Sam feels power unfurling inside of him. He can’t stop himself from reaching toward the men with his mind: wants to shove them all away from Dean and keep them pressed up against the walls of the cage where they can’t hurt him anymore. His head aches with the strain of reaching, and although he feels his power catch at the edges of the bodies below, he isn’t strong enough to do anything. They’re too heavy, or too far away, or a little of both.

It doesn’t stop Sam from trying, though, and by the time it’s over, his head is swimming with pain. He makes himself watch as Dean’s body is dragged from the cage, leaving a red, slug-like trail on the mat. Then he drops his head into his hands and shuts his eyes. In the darkness, all he can see is Dean kneeling there with his hands clasped at the small of the back.

Dean giving up—surrendering to what he had to know was coming—because he didn’t trust himself not to kill any more of them.

“Sam,” Bela murmurs, laying a hand on his arm. “You need to keep it together until we’re back in the car.”

Sam’s chest tightens with a pain that isn’t as intense as the agony in his head but which somehow seems to hurt more. “I’m not—” Swallowing, he lifts his head and focuses on Bela with difficulty. She actually looks a little nauseous herself, which is surprising but makes Sam feel slightly better.

“I have a headache,” he says.

Bela raises her eyebrows skeptically, but she doesn’t accuse him of lying. Instead, while the rest of tonight’s audience files toward the elevator, she reminds him, “They won’t let him die.”

Sam nods. “I know.” He never even considered that they might. Dean is far too valuable to lose like that. “Just—just give me a minute.”

Bela glances at the line waiting for the elevator and then nods. Her hand strokes his arm, as though trying to soothe him, until he shifts away. Dropping his head back down into his hands, Sam fights to center himself. To lock down on the pain and shove it to the back of his mind so that he can be Simon Carver for a few more minutes.

It’s a struggle, but this isn’t a battle he can lose and in the end the pain is distant enough that he thinks he’ll be able to function. When he glances over at the hallway leading to the elevator, Sam finds a woman in a black evening gown disappearing down it and no one in line behind her.

“Okay,” he says, pushing to his feet. “I’m ready.”

Vincent is waiting for them by the elevator. His apologetic smile doesn’t reach his cash cool, satisfied eyes. “I’m sorry, Simon, but I’m afraid the Fenrir won’t be available tonight.”

Bela’s hand tightens on Sam’s arm but he doesn’t need the warning. His anger is a distant, floating thing, locked on the other side of the barrier he put around the pain in his head.

“Exactly how long should I be expecting a delay in the festivities?” His voice is harsher than he thought it would be, but he figures that’s okay. Simon Carver would be annoyed at having his toy taken away from him.

Vincent spreads his hands. “I really couldn’t say at this point. He’s being examined now. I’ll call with more information tomorrow.” His eyes flit to Bela, drag briefly up and down her body, and his smile deepens. “You’ll be fully reimbursed, of course.”

Bela shivers a little against Sam, but her voice is pleasant as she murmurs, “Oh, I’m sure we can work something out.”

Then the elevator door slides open again and she pulls Sam forward. Vincent puts a hand on Sam’s arm as they pass. Somehow, Sam resists the almost overwhelming urge to punch the man.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get your show,” Vincent says.

For a moment, Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then he remembers their discussion over lunch and says in a distant, cold voice, “Right. Your solution to the problem of only having one berserker.”

Bela’s hand tightens on Sam’s arm.

“Indeed,” Vincent agrees. "I had meant to arrange a showing, but something came up."

"So I saw."

Vincent chuckles while somehow still managing to look apologetic. "Sometimes even tame animals require discipline. It helps remind them why they obey."

Sam’s hatred of the man is bubbling up; he needs to get out of here _now_ if he’s going at all. “I understand. Guess I'll see the show some other time,” he says and lets Bela pull him into the elevator.

As their chauffer pulls down the Arena’s long drive, Sam thinks of his brother wearing red, wet gloves on his hands. Thinks of what it must have smelled like for Dean up close: how the copper wash must have rolled over everything, undercut by the sharper bite of urine and the reek of shit. Death smells. Jesus Christ, how could Dean _do_ something like that?

Then Sam thinks of the words he plucked from the man’s sneering mouth just before Dean went berserk.

Whore.

Cocksucker.

 _Yeah, you’re fine with the sex,_ he thinks. His vision blurs and he leans his face against the window. When he shuts his eyes against the building tears, his mind presents him with a flash of Dean’s broken body. Of the limp way he rolled when they kicked him. The grate of broken ribs rubbing together in his chest. That one, pain-blind eye in a blood soaked face.

The entire night—first Dean’s savagery, and then the vicious thoroughness of the beating he took in return—hits Sam hard and sudden. The pain in his head bursts loose at the shock of it and as he clutches at the door he can’t figure out which hurts more: his head or his heart.

“Sam,” Bela murmurs. Her hand brushes his shoulder and he jerks away, skin crawling with revulsion.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he spits. “You gave him to that, you—Jesus Christ.”

“If it makes you feel better, he’s had worse.”

 _Worse?_ How could it get worse than what Sam just saw? And how the fuck can Bela possibly think that knowing it _could_ would make him feel better?


	18. Geri

Sam doesn’t want to fall asleep. He’s frightened of the nightmares that are waiting for him, and after his failure to help Dean in the cage, he’s even more desperate than before to get the telekinesis under control. He sits with his back against the headboard and a tray of sandwiches next to him: eating while he practices helps to ward off the headaches. Sam is going to stay awake all night if he has to: push until he manages consciously what he was able to do in his sleep and lifts the entire room off the floor.

As determined as his mind and spirit are, however, the old saying about the flesh being weak is true. Before the clock turns over to midnight, Sam shuts his eyes—just for a moment, just a short break. The slide into sleep is seamless.

It isn’t a dream, but it isn’t a vision either. This is something new—some kind of mental or spiritual travel—and Sam is looking at his brother in what he knows to be real time. And there’s no doubt in him that it _is_ real, all of it, because he was flexing that inner part of himself _(which he’s also beginning to think of as the_ dark _part of himself)_ when he drifted off.

The room in small, and square, and that white, sterile color which smacks of pain and anesthesia. Dean is lying on a hospital bed, both sidebars up to keep him from rolling off. He’s hooked up to a series of machines that measure his life in steady trills and beeps. The bandages covering his body are soaked red in places, and his entire face is swollen and bruised. On top of that, Dean’s nose is broken, his lower lip is split in three places, and the skin over one arching cheekbone is held together by neat, black sutures.

Sam steps toward the bed with an outstretched hand. He doesn’t know what he intends to do—isn’t sure if he can even touch his brother here: if Dean will be able to feel the offered comfort—but in the end it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because a rough hand clamps down on his wrist before he can reach past the guardrails.

Startled, Sam jerks back and the hand releases him. A broad-shouldered, slim-hipped body slides between him and the bed. A body with a freckle-spattered chest, short tousled hair, and startling gold eyes.

“Dean,” Sam blurts, his own eyes flicking from the brother standing before him to the one lying in the bed.

Dean _(and why the hell is he naked?)_ narrows his eyes. “DeanmeMINE!” he snarls, baring teeth that are a little too sharp to be human.

Oh crap, it isn’t Dean at all. It’s the _wolf_.

For the first time, Sam finds himself face to face with the thing that destroyed his brother’s life: the reason Vincent took an interest in Dean in the first place. His chest clenches with rage.

“Get out of that shape,” he growls. “You don’t get to wear him.”

The wolf cocks its head with a sharp, hostile motion and doesn’t say anything. Sam’s eyes dip minutely of their own accord—it might not be Dean standing there, but it’s his body, and for the first time Sam is free to _look_ without repercussions—and then catch on a thin, raised line running just under the wolf’s left nipple. He remembers when Dean received that particular wound, pushing Sam out of the way and catching the ghost-hurled shard of glass himself.

The fact that the son of a bitch is even wearing Dean’s scars makes Sam burn hotter. “Stop it!” he shouts, curling his hands into fists.

“Stop what?” There’s a kind of grudging curiosity in the wolf’s voice. It’s Dean’s voice almost exactly: just a fraction deeper, a hair rougher.

“Stop looking like him,” he grounds out.

“Look like me,” the wolf corrects. “How else should look?”

“Like a body-snatching wolf!”

The wolf remains unperturbed in the face of Sam’s anger. “Am both,” it says. Its form flickers: Dean’s body flashing out into an oversized wolf and then reappearing. “Am two as one.”

It glances over its shoulder at Dean’s too-still form on the bed and there’s such profound misery in its expression that Sam’s anger slips a notch.

“Still can’t touch,” it mourns. “Can’t hunt.”

It reaches a hand toward Dean and there’s a blinding flash of blue light. When Sam can see again, the wolf is cradling its hand against its chest. The tips of its fingers are charred as though it stuck them into a fire and held them there. With tears running down its cheeks, the wolf opens its mouth and lets out a keening cry that is some misborn mixture of human and beast. The sound of it raises Sam’s flesh in goose bumps.

“Can’t help,” the wolf sobs. “Deanmemine chained. Hurt. Smells like sickness all the time. Wants earth. Wants earth and dark and nomorenomore.” It keens again and Sam presses his hands to his ears.

“Stop! Jesus Christ, shut up!”

He doesn’t know if the wolf is paying attention to him or not, but the keening softens into a whine. It reaches for Dean again and there’s another burst of brilliant azure. This time the noise that the wolf makes is half howl and half scream of rage.

“Tear flesh wide,” it says. “Rip slick meat open and drink down blood. Rend him bite him. Peel off toobrightskins and leave body for worms of earth and carrion wings.”

There’s only one person that the wolf could be talking about. Its voice is filled with the same impotent fury that Sam feels whenever he thinks about the man, and Sam doesn’t think that anyone but Vincent could put a look of such utter loathing on anyone’s face. His anger at the wolf banks almost completely. It’s difficult to stay angry with something so pitiful.

“Do you know what’s happening?” he asks.

The wolf turns wet eyes toward him, and the hate that twists its features is gone instantly, replaced by a deep-seated pain. Sam’s chest gives a weird little flutter at seeing his brother’s face so open and emotional.

“Caged,” the wolf moans. “Caged in blue.”

“Vincent’s drugging him,” Sam says, speaking deliberately and slowly, as though to a young child. “If Dean fights for him, he gets a shot to keep you away.”

“Drown in blue,” the wolf agrees. Then it adds, “No fight, drown in red. Walls everywhere. Caged tight. Pinned down.” It’s panting now, chest heaving and muscles trembling on the verge of panic. Its eyes dart around the room, settle on Dean, and Sam knows what it’s going to do before it moves.

He tries to stop it this time, but isn’t quite fast enough to catch the wolf before it triggers another blue flash. Grabbing it by the arm belatedly, he pulls it away from the bed as it lets out an all too human sob. Sam can’t not respond to that sound, and once they’re far enough for safety, he shifts his hold on the wolf: pulling it toward him and sliding his arms around its shoulders in a hug.

Dean would have tried to get away, maybe punched Sam for taking liberties, but then again Sam never would have tried this with Dean. The wolf _does_ resist, but Sam thinks that its hesitation is due to the fact that it doesn’t understand what he’s doing and isn’t meant as an actual objection to the offered comfort. A moment later, he’s sure of it when the wolf turns into him and presses its face into his collarbone.

It’s an awkward hug with the wolf stiff cradling its injured hand between their chests, but Sam doesn’t care. This isn’t Dean—hell, it isn’t even human—but it feels like him. As Sam strokes a hand down the curve of its spine _(Dean’s spine)_ , feeling the rough edges of old scars and new underneath his fingers, his eyes feel hot and overly moist.

The wolf whimpers at the touch, pushing closer and fisting its good hand in Sam’s shirt. Its injured hand trembles between them, brushing Sam’s chest like a frightened bird, and the whimper rises to a whine.

“Hey, let me see, okay?” Sam says, pulling back slightly and reaching for the wolf’s wrist.

The wolf jerks its hand back, but Sam still has a hold of its right shoulder and it doesn’t pull away completely. It stares at him with flat, distrustful eyes, and Sam shows it his empty palm.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to see your hand, okay?”

The wolf eyes him a moment longer and then, hesitantly, offers its hand for inspection. Sam grasps its wrist _(so delicate, so fragile for a man Dean’s size)_ in one hand and brings it closer. The tips of the wolf’s fingers are burnt black, and charcoal flakes tremble down at Sam’s breath. Down to the second knuckle, the skin is covered in third degree burns.

“Jesus,” Sam whispers.

“Hurts,” the wolf moans, looking at him with wet, pleading eyes. Begging him to do something about it.

That expression on his brother’s face is all but unbearable, and Sam’s voice is harsher than he means it to be when he says, “If it hurts, then why the hell do you do it?”

The wolf gives him a miserable look and then turns its face toward the bed. “Deanmemine,” is all it says: all it needs to say. The depth of longing in its voice is clear as day.

It hurts the wolf to try to touch Dean, but being without him hurts too. The wolf is damned either way, trapped here where it can look but not touch. The entire set up is too strongly reminiscent of Tantalus for Sam not to make the comparison in his head. For the first time, he’s forced to consider the possibility that there may be two victims here instead of just one, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that.

On the one hand, the wolf doesn’t seem like the monster that Dean and Bobby and Sam himself have made it out to be. It seems a little slow-witted, actually, or maybe it’s just naive, strange as that might sound.

On the other hand, this thing practically raped his brother’s soul, forcing its way inside without permission. It’s responsible for Dean being kidnapped and then forced to fight and fuck for a man with no conscience. And Sam knows what happens to berserkers once the soul bleed is complete and the madness begins to take over.

At least he doesn’t have to worry about the wolf’s hand anymore: the burns are already healing with the speed of dreams—or maybe this is normal for animal spirits. Why the hell did Sam’s mind have to take him here, anyway? It’s only complicating things further.

Turning away from Dean abruptly, the wolf shoves its face against Sam’s chest again. He can feel its breath heavy and moist against his shirt: deliberate, deep inhalations.

“Are you _sniffing_ me?” he blurts.

“Smell good,” the wolf answers, voice muffled, and then sniffs again. “Smell like SamBrotherHomeLoveFriendPartnerSammy.”

Well shit. Sam remembers very suddenly that the wolf isn’t his biggest fan. Remembers Dean warning him: telling him what the wolf tried to do in St. Louis.

“Um,” he says, stalling.

But when the wolf raises its head, its eyes are bright and filled with so much hope it hurts to meet its gaze. “Sammy?” it whispers.

“Yeah.”

The wolf lets out a small, happy sound and nuzzles his cheek. Looks like sometime over the past two years it changed its mind about him. Or maybe it’s just deep enough in Dean’s soul by now that it doesn’t feel threatened anymore.

The wolf nuzzles again, harder, and then licks his jaw.

Sam’s muscles tense with an abruptness that’s painful and he’s suddenly hyper aware that his brother’s naked body is pressed up against him. _No,_ he reminds himself. _This isn’t Dean._ It doesn’t stop his hands from settling on the wolf’s _(Dean’s)_ hips: from noticing how perfectly they fit there, like complimentary interlocking pieces.

“Came for us,” the wolf says, oblivious to the effect it’s having. “Pack.”

“Yeah.” It’s a low, reluctant sigh. In spite of the things the wolf has done—the things it is—Sam has to admit that the mission has changed. Against every one of his expectations, he actually _likes_ the wolf: feels sorry for it. He isn’t just here for Dean anymore.

The wolf shifts against him, all energy and exuberance like a puppy, and Sam flushes. He uses his grip on its hips to move it away before it can feel the hard press of his rising erection. It blinks at him, crestfallen at the separation, and he gives its shoulder a quick, reassuring pat.

“It’s okay, I just, uh, I was wondering what I should call you.”

It tilts its head in confusion. “Am Deanmemine.”

“I can’t call you that.”

“Why?”

Oh, let Sam count the reasons. “Because—look, I just can’t.”

“Don’t need name,” the wolf says dismissively.

Sam’s jaw clenches with a flash of irritation. Now he understands how Dean could get so ticked off trying to hold a conversation with something that is at once so human in emotion and yet so alien in mind.

“Humans need names,” he explains.

“Not human.”

“Yeah, well I am, and I have to have something to call you.” Sam thinks for a moment and then says, “Geri.”

The wolf’s mouth cracks open in a wide smile. One of those wide, eye-crinkling grins that Sam sees so rarely on his brother’s face. “Odinwulf,” it says. “Eat best meat. Roam far.”

Sam isn’t sure whether it knows the story of Allfather Odin and his two wolves, Geri and Freki, because it found the information in Dean’s mind or if it already knew on its own. Right now, all that matters is that it isn’t offended by the name, and that the frustration has helped to refocus Sam on more important things than his own fucked up libido.

“Right,” he agrees. “Now I need to ask you some questions, okay? To help Dean?”

Geri cocks its head.

“How much can you see? Of what happens to him?”

“Some. Not all. Like echoes on the wind. Everything is blue. Sometimes red.”

Sam frowns. “What do you mean, ‘sometimes red’?”

Geri scrunches its face in concentration as it searches for the words to explain. “Am alone. Everything hurts. Everything is angry. Red. Want to rendbitetear. Can’t think. Like bees under skin, in head. Smells like burning earth.”

“Okaaaay. And how often does that happen?”

Geri hitches Dean’s shoulders in a shrug that looks awkward: probably because the motion is unfamiliar to the wolf. “No time here. Don’t know.”

Sam wonders if the ‘red’ comes when Dean is in the ring, fighting and drawing on the wolf’s energy to stay one step ahead. There’s no way to be certain, of course, but it makes sense. The wolf must be sensing Dean’s adrenaline rush and responding to it.

He could keep dancing around what he really wants to ask all night, but the truth is that he has no idea how long he’ll be able to stay here. And as much as he fears the answer, he has to know.

“If I can find a way to get Dean out of there, will he come?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, and Sam doesn’t think the wolf can lie anyway. Doesn’t think it knows how.

Relief floods him, leaving his muscles weak and trembling in its wake, but he can’t stop from pressing, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Can’t lose SamBrotherHomeLoveFriendPartnerSammy again. Can’t stay. Hurts here.” It touches its chest with its hand at that last, and Sam’s own chest gives a hollow, aching clench.

“Then why is he trying to push me away?” he asks, voice a hoarse whisper.

Geri drops its eyes and, shifting its weight from one foot to the other, mumbles, “Don’t know.”

Apparently it _can_ lie. Just not very well.

“You _do_ know,” Sam says more strongly. “Why is he trying to get me to leave?”

“Can’t say.” It gives a little half step toward the bed, one hand reaching out, and then catches itself. “Deanmemine doesn’t want SamBrotherHomeLoveFriendPartnerSammy to know.”

“He’s trying to protect me from something, isn’t he?” Sam guesses, and the wolf’s guilty flinch confirms it. God, like Dean hasn’t already fucked things up enough doing that.

“Well, what is it?” Remembering Vincent’s not-so-subtle warning on the Gymnasium catwalk, he adds, “Does Vincent know who I am?”

“Yes.” Eyes to one side, fidgeting.

“You’re lying again.”

“Am not.”

“Just fucking tell me!” Sam snaps, and the dark place inside of his mind flexes, pushing outward and _demanding_ an answer.

The power parts around Geri like water around a rock, impotent. The wolf jerks as if he slapped it, though: nostrils flaring and lips drawing back from its teeth.

“Deathlessdark!” it growls. The hard lines of Dean’s body fold in on themselves and sprout thick, grey fur. An instant later it’s the wolf before Sam, snarling and edging closer.

“I’m not—whatever you think, I’m—”

But Geri isn’t listening. It’s gearing up to launch itself at him, hind quarters bunching and wriggling a little from side to side. If it kills him in here, does his body die?

Sam thinks yes.

 _Out, I need to get out of here,_ he thinks desperately, and reaches for the dark place inside of him again. The power comes easily and begins to rip him away just as the wolf leaps. He feels its claws sink into his chest and then he’s jolting awake, heart going a mile a minute and chest burning.

Sam scrambles upright and pulls off his shirt with a hiss. When he looks down at his chest, there are shallow gouges in his skin where the wolf clawed him. Sweating and shaking, he goes into the bathroom and washes the wounds. They’ve stopped bleeding by the time he’s finished, but he bandages them anyway: he doesn’t want to have to answer questions if they open up on him again in front of Bela and Bobby—or worse, Vincent or Dean.

When he’s done, Sam stares at his face in the mirror: hair wild and desperately needing a cut, eyes shell-shocked.

“I was in Dean’s head—or his soul. Somewhere deep.”

Saying it out loud makes it real in a way not even the claw marks could, and he bites his lip. It wasn’t intentional, but he definitely invaded his brother’s privacy for the second night in a row. He knows exactly what Dean would say if he found out—especially if he knew that Sam talked to the wolf.

Worse than the guilt, though, is the unease caused by Geri’s reaction to Sam’s powers. Sam didn't threaten it—he doesn't think he did, anyway—but it acted like he had. It looked at Sam with a snarling, hate-fueled fear that Sam has seen on his brother’s face only once before: in the cabin, when the yellow-eyed son of a bitch had them both pinned against the wall.

Even without that memory for reference, Sam would have known what the wolf meant by ‘deathlessdark’. There’s only one thing that would provoke such a knee-jerk response from an animal spirit.

Demons.

Sam has known since the church in New York that his powers come from nothing good, but he never quite dared _(consciously, anyway)_ to consider they’re demon-driven. Refused to even entertain the possibility that any part of him could come from something so dark and twisted and evil.

He looks deeper into his eyes, searching for a hint of black—or maybe the sickly mustard of the yellow-eyed demon’s irises. It’s funny how similar in shade that color is to Geri’s golden gaze, and yet how different meeting the demon’s stare was from meeting the wolf’s. There’s power in both, and an alien intelligence, but Geri’s eyes are the baking warmth of the sun. The demon’s burned and yet shed no heat: stole it instead and left Sam’s skin chilled to the touch.

He shakes his head slightly. Searching his reflection is pointless. The change—and there _is_ one: Sam can feel it now that he’s looking—is inside. Hidden down deep like a cancerous growth of cells.

With a thought, the bloodied face cloth that Sam used on his chest lifts from the edge of the sink. He floats it across the room and drops it in the clothing hamper. Something that small is effortless now: leaves him feeling exhilarated rather than exhausted. Leaves him wanting to do more.

 _I should stop,_ Sam thinks, watching as a drawer opens itself and the leftover bandages and the tube of antiseptic cream disappear inside. _Dean would want me to stop._

But he already knows that he won’t.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Bobby’s voice.

Softer, unintelligible murmur of Bela answering.

“That is the _stupidest_ thing I’ve ever heard, and believe me, lady, I’ve heard plenty.”

Sam opens his eyes and sits up. When he glances at the clock next to the bed, the red numbers tell him that it’s 10:32, which means that he’s gotten about five hours of dreamless sleep. It’s five hours more than he expected after the wolf’s revelation. He’s still tired, of course: body begging for a little more downtime.

His mind seems to be working again, though, and Bobby’s still yelling at Bela. Sam has no idea what this particular fight’s about, but he’d prefer it if the two of them didn’t kill each other before they have a chance to rescue Dean.

As he pushes out from underneath the covers, he grimaces at the twinge of pain from the scratches on his chest. He brushes his knuckles against the back of the bandage and then pulls on a t-shirt before hurrying out into the main part of the suite. Following the sound of hostile voices, he tracks Bela and Bobby down in the conference room.

Bela is standing on the far side of the table when Sam pokes his head in, but all of her attention is focused on Bobby, who has his back to the door. “—damned sight more useful than you, you toothless old mongrel,” Bela is hissing.

Sam clears his throat, drawing Bela’s eyes and making Bobby jerk around. For a long moment, they both stare at him silently: too caught up in their argument to adjust with any speed to the intrusion.

“Morning,” Sam says finally, and that breaks their paralysis.

Bobby’s face darkens with a mix of outrage and disbelief and he demands, “Do you know what this crazy bitch did?”

“I got us the help we need,” Bela snaps before Sam can say anything. “Or did you think that Vincent was just going to let Dean go if we asked nicely?”

“The man’s rabid,” Bobby growls, whirling back to face her and slamming both hands down on the table. “If it’s supernatural, he kills it. No questions asked. What on God’s green earth gave you the brilliant idea to ask him to help rescue a _berserker_?”

Sam has never seen anyone actually look down their nose at someone else before, but Bela’s doing a pretty good job of it now. “I _asked_ him to help rescue a _hunter_. There’s no reason he ever has to know that he’s doing more than that.”

“He isn’t stupid, Bela! He’s gonna—”

“Would one of you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about before you start putting holes in each other?” Sam breaks in.

“Gordon Walker,” Bobby answers immediately, angling his body so that he can see Sam without completely losing sight of Bela. His voice is shaking with disgust. “All the hunters in the world and she decides to invite Walker and his friends to the party.”

The name sounds familiar, and it only takes Sam a few seconds to realize that’s because he knows Gordon. “You called Gordon?” he says, frowning slightly as he looks past Bobby to Bela.

Bela opens her mouth to respond but Bobby gets there first. “You know him?”

“Dean and I ran into him on a job a few weeks before you helped Dean fake his death.”

Bobby ducks his head a little at the harshness of Sam’s voice, but Sam is too busy remembering to really notice.

He and Dean went to Red Lodge to investigate a string of cattle mutilations and beheadings and found vampires. With the wolf awake and his senses heightened, it didn’t take long for Dean to track down the nest, and after that it was almost child’s play to take them out. Almost _too_ easy, actually. Sam never could get that job to sit right with him: kept thinking of the way that one of the vamps—a girl with long, dark hair—kept shouting for them to stop, to let her explain. Dean cut right through her mid-yell, adding another splash of glistening blood to what was already slicking his skin, and that was when the door burst open again and a black man wearing a dark flannel shirt and clutching a machete of his own joined in.

Dean slowed at the interruption—refused to use the wolf’s power in front of people if he could help it—but with the three of them fighting side by side, the remaining vampires never had a chance anyway. After, the stranger let out a whoop of exhilaration, grinning through a splatter of blood, and stuck his hand out.

“Gordon Walker,” he said. “Damn, you boys are good.”

Over several celebratory rounds that night, Gordon told them how he’d been hunting this particular nest for weeks: searching fruitlessly for the nest. He’d heard them asking questions in the bar and was following with the intent of introducing himself when he realized that they’d found the very place he’d been looking for.

“How’d you manage that, anyway?” he asked in that strangely soft, calm voice he had.

Dean grinned at him, carefree mask firmly in place, and lied, “We saw one of them leaving the bar and followed. Guess we just got lucky.”

“Naw, luck didn’t have anything to do with it,” Gordon replied, offering Dean a warm smile in return. “You’re just John Winchester’s boys through and through.”

Sam put up with a few more minutes of watching his brother and his new ‘friend’ slapping each other on the back and then split. Something about Gordon set Sam’s teeth on edge, and it wasn’t just the way the man couldn’t seem to take his eyes off his brother. Sam might be more prone to jealousy than he thought—especially where Dean is concerned—but he can tell the difference between that green-tinged emotion and the uneasy stir he feels now when he thinks of Gordon.

Talking with the man, however pleasant Gordon was being, had been like taking a bite out of a candy bar and crunching down on the unpleasant, metallic ting of tinfoil. And Dean—Dean, who’d been sullen and uncommunicative for weeks—was _laughing_ with the son of a bitch.

Okay, so maybe Sam’s a little jealous. That doesn’t negate the fact that he has some very valid, if vague, concerns about the man’s character.

“Gordon’s good at what he does, Sam,” Bela pipes up, pulling his eyes back to her. She’s giving him her best ‘now, let’s be reasonable’ face, which makes him wish that the sweats he’s wearing had pockets to shove his fists into. He doesn’t try to hide his irritation, but Bela either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, blithely continuing, “And he’ll be bringing at least two other men with him. We need as much muscle as we can get.”

She hasn’t said anything outright, but Sam’s known her long enough to catch the prodding note in her voice. His irritation subsides as he figures out what she’s hinting at and he comes further into the room to sit down.

“He’s the fanatic you were talking about,” he says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bobby look at him sharply, but all of his attention is on Bela, who gives him a nod.

Well, that explains Sam’s unease with the man, anyway. Call them what you like—zealots, fanatics, idealists—but Sam’s never been comfortable dealing with people who are willing to die for an idea. He’s seen too much of that martyrdom in his own family to appreciate it in others.

Sighing, he asks, “We need him?”

In answer, Bela pushes her laptop across the table toward him and then leans after it. Her hair brushes the back of Sam’s hand as he reaches out and tilts the screen back so that he can see it. Ten thirty in the morning and Bela’s already wearing make-up and perfume. Sam is beginning to wonder if she rolls out of bed that way.

“What am I looking at?” he asks.

“I assume you recognize the layout of the twelfth floor?”

Sam’s thumb ghosts over the edge of the screen. Over the cells that have been his brother’s home for the past six months. “Yeah.”

Bela leans even further, giving him a better view of her cleavage than he ever wanted, and hits a few buttons on the keyboard. Yellow lines pop up on the screen, overlaying the initial blueprint. One of them, running through the outer wall and off the edge of the map, is slightly thicker than the rest.

“Water lines,” Bela tells him. “Now, watch closely.” She hits another button and the lines turn blue. “ _These_ are the lines that are actively in use. Notice anything?”

“One’s missing,” Sam answers. He traces the place where the thicker yellow line ran. Where there’s nothing but wall now.

“Vincent’s a bright boy,” Bela says, clicking the keyboard once more and bringing the yellow lines up again. “He isn’t going to put his prize possession at the bottom of an underground installation without some kind of back-up extraction route in case of emergency.”

Now that she’s pointed it out, it’s completely obvious. Vincent is one of the most compulsive men Sam has ever met when it comes to having his ass covered: of course he’s going to have a secret escape route. The tightness in Sam’s chest, which has been building since he saw the extent of Vincent’s set up yesterday, loosens. He can see the tunnel in his mind: wide enough for a man to walk without bending over, running at a slight upward angle until …

“Where does it come out?”

“I don’t know,” Bela admits, straightening again. “It doesn’t appear on any of the other maps. I’m willing to bet that wherever it comes out we’ll find transportation waiting, though. Most likely a Jeep or some other off-road vehicle. There will likely be emergency supplies there as well. But we won’t be taking your brother _anywhere_ unless Vincent’s attention is otherwise occupied.”

What Bela is proposing is the oldest trick in the book, performed by magicians and thieves since the earliest days of human history. ‘Look here!’ the con artist says, and snaps his fingers to create a spark and a puff of smoke with one hand. Meanwhile, of course, he’s robbing you blind with his left. As a Winchester, Sam has had extensive training in this particular form of misdirection, although he’s used to playing right hand to Dean’s left.

“You’ve been planning this the whole time,” he says slowly. “You knew there’d be some kind of back exit; you just needed to know where.”

“Planning what?” Bobby asks. There’s a suspicious sharpness to his voice.

Sam continues to meet Bela’s uncompromising gaze. “We’re going to throw Gordon and his friends at the front door while we slip out the back. Aren’t we, Bela?”

Whatever Bela sees on Sam’s face pleases her. The smile she offers him is almost genuine. “Essentially.”

“Are you two _insane_?” Bobby hisses. “That’s suicide!”

Sam shrugs and traces the proposed escape route with his fingers.

Bobby drops his hands down onto the table mere inches to Sam’s right, demanding his attention. Sam clenches his jaw and continues to stare at the computer screen.

“Look,” Bobby says, “I don’t like Gordon any more than the next guy, but you can’t be serious about this!”

A disorienting wave of déjà vu washes through Sam: he just had this conversation with Bela a few days ago and the irony of the situation isn’t lost on him. But that version of himself seems years distant, and he was only putting up a fight for the sake of appearances, anyway. Now … now the only problems he has with Bela’s plan are whether Gordon and his two, maybe more, men are going to be able to keep Vincent’s attention long enough.

“Sam!” Bobby barks, pounding one hand against the table.

Turning in his seat, Sam finally looks up at Bobby. He doesn’t try to hide what he’s become: face empty of everything but purpose and eyes desolate with need. Bobby stares at him for a few seconds, taking it in. Then his breath punches out and he backs up, his face set in stiff, horrified lines.

“You _are_ serious,” he breathes. “Jesus Christ, Sam.”

“He’s my brother,” Sam says. “I love him.”

“You don’t think I love him too?” Bobby shouts back. “I would lay down my own life to get him back, no hesitation. But you can’t make that decision for other people!”

Sam’s getting a crick in his neck from sitting like this. He pulls his chair out and around a little so that he can face Bobby better. On the other side of the table, Bela’s being smart and keeping her mouth shut for once.

“Gordon’s not stupid,” Sam points out. “He won’t let me send him into certain death.”

“No, he wouldn’t, but you aren’t planning on letting him know the odds, are you? You’re gonna twist things around until it looks real feasible.”

Sam’s eyes don’t waver. “Yes,” he answers.

Bobby looks at him like he’s trying to find the old Sam somewhere: the man who flinched when his brother backhanded a demon. But that Sam is gone: scraped away by painstaking effort on Sam’s part. Maybe burned away by the dark, unfurling power inside of him.

“You do this,” Bobby warns, “and you won’t be any better than them.”

Sure he will. It isn’t like he’s planning on whoring Gordon out, after all.

But what Sam says is, “I need him back.”

He can hear the depth of his yearning coloring his voice: knows it’s also seeping into his expression from the minute shift in Bobby’s face. Reluctant suspicion creeping in around the edges of the man’s gaze. Sam could still pull this back: could salvage the situation. Bobby would let him for the peace of his own mind.

“I love him,” he repeats instead, and Bobby jerks.

“You—Goddamn it.” Bobby drags a shaking hand across his mouth and Sam knows that he heard that confession for what it was meant to be.

Now it will come: shouts of revulsion and disgust before Bobby walks out of the suite and leaves them on their own. Sam would welcome it—hell, he thinks he may have been gunning for it. It was a mistake to bring the man in on this. Bobby’s reasons for being here aren’t wrong, not completely, but they’re colored by the promise he made to Dean: a promise Sam isn’t going to let him keep. Besides, the man has too many scruples for this business.

But instead of yelling, Bobby pinches the arch of his nose with two fingers, bows his head, and whispers, “Jesus.”

From the corner of his eyes, Sam catches Bela’s wrinkled forehead and confused frown. He ignores her: doesn’t particularly care if she figures out what’s going on. She needs him, and even if she didn’t, Sam is pretty sure that a few incestuous urges wouldn’t faze her in the slightest.

“I’m not going to apologize for it,” he tells Bobby. “I’m not ashamed, and it isn’t really any of your business. I told you because I want you to understand that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get him back.”

When Bobby raises his eyes, it’s to look at Bela. “Get out,” he says.

She stiffens. “I’d like to remind you that I’m _paying_ for this—”

“Get the fuck out now,” Bobby repeats without raising his voice. He doesn’t need to raise it.

Sam shifts his gaze a little to see how Bela is reacting to that dangerous, hostile tone and catches her gaping. It isn’t a flattering expression. She flicks her eyes to Sam, maybe catches something of his thoughts on his face, and clenches her jaw.

“Fine,” she bites out. Leaning over the table again, she pushes her laptop shut and strides toward the door.

“And shut the door behind you,” Bobby adds. Bela doesn’t so much shut it as slam it, but Sam was expecting as much and doesn’t jump. Leaning back in his chair, he waits for Bobby to gather his thoughts.

It doesn’t take long.

“Does Dean know? Is he—are you two … ” He trails off, unable to finish the question.

“Are we what?”

“You _know_ what,” Bobby grunts.

Sam does. But although Bobby’s voice holds no condemnation, the entire conversation has a hint of moral superiority that Sam doesn’t much care for. He regards Bobby with a cool expression and waits.

“Are you fucking?” Bobby finally gets out, the color high in his cheeks.

“Not that it’s any of your goddamned business, but no. Dean isn’t—he isn’t interested.”

Bobby’s relieved exhale at that announcement fans Sam’s anger and he digs his fingers into his thigh to keep from lurching up and driving his fist into the man’s face. He keeps himself very still and quiet as Bobby approaches and sits down next to him. From the earnest expression Bobby’s wearing, he has no idea how close to the edge Sam is.

“Look,” Bobby says, “I realize that you’ve been through a lot this year. You’re bound to have some … reactions … to that kind of stress, but it’ll pass, okay?”

Sam blinks at the man for a few seconds before what Bobby’s saying sinks in. Then a burst of heat flashes through his chest and he narrows his eyes. “You think this is some kind of _phase_?” he blurts incredulously.

“Sam—” Bobby starts, reaching for him.

Sam jerks to his feet and backs out of reach. He thinks that the chair he was sitting in may have fallen over, but he isn’t sure. He knows that he’s shaking, though: rage shuddering through his muscles. The dark place in his mind throbs warningly.

“Fuck you, Bobby,” he spits.

Bobby’s face twists—disgust, anger, embarrassment—and he shouts back, “It isn’t natural, Sam! He’s your goddamned _brother_!”

There’s no stopping the flare of power that whips out of Sam. One minute Bobby is leaning forward in his chair and the next he’s pinned against the wall. It’s a position that brings up too many memories of the cabin, and the yellow-eyed demon looking out from Dad’s face, and Dean begging with blood on his lips. Sam’s stomach lurches, but he doesn’t ease off: just sinks deeper into the darkness inside of him and takes refuge in the happy thrum of power.

“How’s that for ‘ _natural_ ’?” he snarls.

“Put me down, Sam.” Bobby’s trying to sound calm and collected, but his eyes—too wide, too much white—are giving him away.

“There’s something inside of me, Bobby,” Sam says, stepping toward the man. “And it’s dark and it’s hungry and on the other side of the world from ‘natural’.” He comes to a stop a few inches from Bobby: close enough to see sweat beading the man’s face. Close enough to smell his fear.

“But what I feel for Dean is the best part of me. _Dean_ is the best part of me. And there isn’t one goddamned thing wrong with loving someone.”

Sam feels exhausted suddenly: not from the use of power—after the last two days, this isn’t taking any more effort than picking up a half-grown Labrador—but emotionally. Dealing with Bobby always wears him out these days.

With a thought, he lowers the man back to the ground and then releases him. Bobby must feel the power letting go, but he stays where he is anyway, watching Sam warily. Probably itching for some holy water right about now. Sam’s lips twitch briefly at the thought and then he sobers again.

“I’m not gonna hurt him,” he says. “I love him. I’ve loved him in one way or another my whole life, and I’m not gonna stop just because you think it isn’t right.”

Bobby’s silent for a long moment and then he repeats his first question in a soft voice that sounds as weary as Sam feels. “Does he know?”

Rubbing his eyes, Sam turns away and heads back to the table. “He knew before I did.”

“How long?”

Sam could tell Bobby about that day at the lake, but he won’t. It’s private, and he isn’t sure that’s where this started anyway. His reaction to Dean’s body that afternoon was a little strong not to have already been deeply embedded.

Letting out a brittle laugh, he leans against the table and says, “I don’t know—forever? Since I figured out what my dick was for? What the hell does it matter?”

Bobby’s hand drops on his shoulder and Sam jerks. He briefly thinks about pulling away and then settles. If Bobby’s still willing to touch him after the show he just put on, let alone the confession he just offered, then he should be grateful.

So why does he still want to punch the man?

“You just—you took me by surprise, is all,” Bobby says. “I’m not—I was raised to think it was wrong.”

“You think I wasn’t?” Sam turns and Bobby’s hand falls away. “You think I don’t know exactly what Dad would say if he knew?”

Bobby nods. “I know you do. And I know you wouldn’t ever hurt Dean. I just—you can’t spring something like that on me and expect me to just take it with a grain of salt. And if you’re looking for a way to pick a fight with me, then maybe next time you should choose something that won’t get you so riled up yourself.”

Bobby’s right: that was exactly what Sam did. He saw Bobby’s response to Bela’s plan and his knee-jerk reaction was to take the man out of the picture. Should have known that Bobby would be too canny and stubborn to be driven off that easily.

Sam’s anger subsides and he runs a hand through his hair with a rueful half-grin. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

“Now, are we gonna talk about what you just did, or are you gonna pin me to the wall again if I bring it up?”

There’s still a twinge of fear in Bobby’s eyes, but it’s already mostly covered by concern. Not _about_ Sam, either, but _for_ him. For the first time in what feels like forever, Sam catches a glimpse of the man who bandaged his scraped knees and fixed him ice cream sundaes when the weather was hot.

“I get visions,” he says, and Bobby make a little ‘get on with it’ twirl with one hand. He already knew that part. Clearing his throat, Sam continues, “It used to just go forward, but I think I’m getting visions of the past too now. I can move things with my mind, and last night I think I was inside Dean’s head. Oh, uh, and I can control demons—not that any of them will come anywhere near me these days.”

Bobby’s frown has been deepening since ‘visions of the past’, and when Sam mentions demons he winces. “How long has this been going on?”

“The visions started a few weeks before Jess was killed. The rest—it’s sort of been coming up as I need it. Ever since Dean disappeared.”

“Are you encouraging it?”

“I need all the help I can get,” Sam says, jutting his chin out stubbornly.

Bobby heaves a sigh that comes right out of his gut and sinks down into a convenient chair. “Sam, this isn’t good. This kind of power, wherever it comes from, there’s always a price.”

Thanks to the wolf, Sam knows exactly where his power comes from. He can already feel the price as a sullying weight on his soul. He doesn’t think he used to be this volatile, and for a few seconds there, when he was holding Bobby up with the power and smelling the sour reek of fear, he hadn’t been angry but _excited_.

Averting his eyes, Sam says, “I know, Bobby, but Dean—he needs me. I’ll—once he’s out, I’ll stop.”

Bobby’s silent for a long moment and then he asks, “You gonna be able to?”

“Yes,” Sam answers without hesitation, but he’s lying.

The power is coming easier than ever these days, and he never made a conscious decision to attack Bobby. It just … happened. Regardless of the consequences, Sam doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop. He’s passed that point.

Maybe Bobby should be thinking about shooting both of them. Maybe that would be for the best. Safest.

But Sam already knows that he isn’t going to let that happen.

He’s always been a selfish son of a bitch, and that isn’t going to change now.


	19. War Council

“Gordon.” Sam takes the man’s hand and gives it a firm shake. “Thanks for coming.”

They’re meeting in one of the Bellagio’s private rooms for what is supposedly a high-stakes poker game. Although the stakes couldn’t possibly be higher, in Sam’s opinion, there won’t be much card playing done this afternoon.

“Your brother’s a good man,” Gordon says. His voice is as soft as Sam remembers: almost effeminate. He sounds incongruously like he should be wearing pink and discussing fabric treatments. “He’s a good hunter.”

Sam meets Gordon’s muddy eyes and knows that if the man knew what Dean really was, he’d be first in line to put him down. He’d shoot Dean in the head without hesitation, probably cut his heart out and salt and burn the corpse to make sure the job was done. Then he’d wash up and go out for a drink to celebrate another monster destroyed. Actually, with what Sam’s capable of these days, he isn’t sure that he wouldn’t make it on to Gordon’s to-do list as well.

None of that knowledge is on his face as he smiles and agrees, “He is. Did you guys have a good flight?”

His gaze lifts to take in the three men flanking Gordon. The man directly to Gordon’s left has a craggy face and sandy brown hair, and he’s wearing a Henley and a cross and smiling a little vaguely. To his left is a slightly overweight man with a goatee and dark hair. Standing a little behind and to Gordon’s right is a short, Hispanic man with a bit of a squint and a scar permanently curling his lip.

With the exception of the man with the goatee, none of Gordon’s friends meet Sam’s gaze. The sneering man is too busy scanning the room for some imagined threat, and the man with the cross doesn’t seem to be looking at anything at all. It’s amazing how much faith in these men Sam is … well, _not_ having right now.

“Let me get a few things straight with you, Sam,” Gordon says, pulling Sam’s attention back. “I don’t much like you. You and me, we’re from different worlds, and I think you know it too. I also think you’re full of yourself and one hell of a condescending bastard.”

Sam’s polite smile freezes on his lips.

“I’m not here for you, and I’m not here for the cold-hearted bitch over there.” Gordon nods to Bela, who is sitting at the table and shuffling the deck of cards that will almost certainly not be getting any use this afternoon. Bela gives him a cool smile in return and shows no sign that she heard the insult or is bothered by it if she did.

“I’m here because Dean Winchester doesn’t deserve to die fighting a bunch of vicious freaks for some rich assholes’ amusement,” Gordon continues, as soft and toneless as ever. “So I’ll fight, and we’ll bring Dean out with us. But I’m not going to buddy around with you while we do it, okay?”

As he meets Gordon’s flat gaze, Sam has to resist the urge to shiver. Bela called the man a fanatic, and Sam agreed with her, but the term doesn’t fit Gordon as well as it did a year ago. He’s moved past mere fanaticism and on into the realm of batshit crazy. Sam can see it in Gordon’s absent smile, and in his eyes, which are so much like a rabid dog’s that Sam’s flesh crawls.

Swallowing his revulsion, Sam gives a curt nod and lets his easy-going mask slip into something more professional. “Okay,” he agrees.

Gordon gestures to his left without taking his eyes from Sam and announces, “This is Kubrick and Creedy.” Nodding to his right, he finishes up the introductions with: “Reagan. No relation to the president.”

Sam hesitates, uncertain if that was meant to be a joke or if Gordon is just that unhinged. Reagan isn’t smiling like it is, but then again Reagan hasn’t stopped studying the walls. There’d better be a hell of a lot more to these men than there appears to be.

Letting the joke _(if that’s what it was)_ pass, Sam heads back to the table. “Make yourselves at home and we’ll start coming up with a plan.”

That’s a bald-faced lie, of course: the plan has already been locked into place—he and Bela and Bobby cemented it upstairs. The purpose of this meeting is to get Gordon and his merry band of madmen to agree to the plan, while simultaneously convincing them that they’re actually the ones coming up with it.

Piece of cake.

Sam sits down next to Bela, overcome with the nagging absurdity that she’s the sanest person in the room apart from himself. Gordon sits across from them, Kubrick to his right and Creedy to his left. Reagan has left the doorway, and is busy making a slow circuit of the room. Gordon follows Sam’s gaze and smiles.

“Can’t be too careful these days,” he says.

Sam isn’t sure how to respond to that, but luckily he’s saved by Bobby’s arrival. Bobby’s wearing his waiter disguise again, coke-bottle glasses included, but even with them on he doesn’t miss the two guns pointed in his direction. Sam’s eyes flick toward Reagan and he corrects himself: three guns. Gordon’s the only one who hasn’t drawn, but Sam isn’t foolish enough to think that’s because he isn’t armed, or is slow on the draw. He’s just the only one here who knows Bobby.

“Guns up,” Gordon says, and there’s a soft click of safeties being put back on. Creedy puts his pistol away as well, but Kubrick just lays his on the table. When Sam glances at Reagan, the man is still holding his revolver loosely in one hand while he looks behind a painting.

Despite his too-fast pulse, Sam feels comforted by the display. Whatever else these men are, they’re fast.

Now that he’s not in danger of being shot anymore, Bobby comes the rest of the way into the room and shuts the door behind him. He puts the tray of drinks—whiskey for Gordon and his friends, iced tea for Sam and Bela and himself—down on the table and then pulls the glasses off.

“Walker,” he grunts, blinking in an effort to clear his vision.

“Singer,” Gordon responds. He sounds even less thrilled to see Bobby than he was to see Sam. Sam wonders if there’s bad blood there: if Bobby would tell him if there were. Probably not.

The floor plans of the Arena that Bobby pulls out from underneath his suit jacket and passes around the table have been edited: all of the guard stations and cameras are still there, of course, but numbers have been slightly altered, and some of the nastier booby traps have been left out. If everything goes well—if Ash has as much control over the Arena’s operating system as he said he would—then Gordon and the others will never even know those security measures existed.

As they get down to business, Bobby still doesn’t look thrilled with lying. There’s obvious—to Sam, anyway—reluctance in his voice as he plays his part in the charade, but at least he’s going along with it. And neither Gordon nor his flunkies know Bobby well enough to read the self-disgust in the man’s eyes.

Sam himself feels only a growing sense of relief as things fall into place.

Despite everything that he’s arranging to make the assault easier on them, these men are probably going to die. They’re going to walk right in through Vincent’s front door, tossing hand grenades around like rice at a wedding and shooting everything that moves, and they’re going to do it in the belief that they’re opening a path for Sam and Dean.

And while they’re busy dying, Sam is going to sneak his brother out the back door.

He should be bothered by his lack of guilt, but he’s past that now. He doesn’t know if that’s because his concern for Dean is fuzzing his other emotions out like heavy static, or if the darkness in his mind has already polluted him to the extent that he no longer has a conscience. It doesn’t much matter either way. Not as long as he gets his brother back.

The cell phone Bela gave him when they first got to Vegas—the one registered to Simon Carver—rings around four o’clock when Kubrick and Creedy are arguing about entrance points. It’s Bela’s turn to herd them in the right direction, so Sam excuses himself, stepping just outside the room, and answers.

“Hello?”

“Simon. It’s Vincent Camargo.”

It isn’t like Sam expected it to be anyone else, but for some reason he still feels caught off guard. “Mr. Camargo,” he says, “How are you?”

“I’m fine, and yourself?” Pleasant and proper as always.

“I’m in the middle of a card game, actually,” Sam answers, and Vincent makes an apologetic tsking noise.

“Dreadfully sorry to interrupt, but I had some news on our Fenrir.”

Dean isn't ‘their’ anything: he's his own man first and then Sam’s. Sam’s brother, Sam’s friend, Sam’s _everything_. Forcing down his anger, Sam says, “And?”

“Unfortunately, he isn’t healing as quickly as I’d hoped. I’ll have to cancel your appointment for tonight.”

Sam flashes on Dean lying on the hospital bed, uncharacteristically small and broken, and a painful lump lodges in his throat.

“Mr. Carver?” Vincent prods.

“That’s … disappointing,” Sam manages.

“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience. If you’d like, I could have him ready for you earlier than usual tomorrow. He isn’t fighting, so he’ll be available any time after his five o’clock feeding.”

Vincent’s talking about feeding Dean in the same off-handed tone he might discuss watering a horse and rage shatters the pain clogging Sam’s throat. But he refuses to let his anger get in the way of the opportunity he’s being presented with.

“Five will be fine,” he says. “I hate to miss the fights, but I think he can find some way of making it up to me.”

“I’m sure he will,” Vincent agrees. Sam can hear the insinuating smile in the man’s voice and tightens his grip on the phone. “I’ll let my staff know to expect you at five, then. Shall we be seeing you and Bela this evening?”

Sam wants to say no. He wants to stay here and finish working through the plan with Gordon and the others: it’s taking longer to convince them than he thought it would. Apparently, crazy doesn’t necessarily mean stupid. He knows what’s expected of him, though, and this close to the finish line they can’t afford to arouse Vincent’s suspicion.

“Of course. We’re looking forward to it.”

“Excellent. I’ll see you then.”

When Sam lets himself back into the room, both Bela and Bobby look at him with the same question in their eyes. They know as well as Sam did what a call on that phone meant. Reagan raises his eyes—and, briefly, his gun—and then goes back to looking over one of the floor plans with Gordon and the others.

Sam gives his head a slight shake and Bobby’s face takes on a pained, pinched look. Bela just regards Sam steadily for a few moments—probably gauging his ability to continue functioning while Dean is lying on a hospital bed—and then turns her attention back to the men. Sam keeps his own gaze on her as he sits back down at the table.

 _What are you after?_ he wonders as she smiles encouragingly at something Creedy says. As usual, there’s no answer forthcoming. Whatever Bela wants, Sam’s sure that it’s going to pop up and bite him in the balls when he least expects it.

He’s just lucky that way.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In a very real way, Sam doesn’t attend the fight at the Arena that night. His body sits in the seat beside Bela’s, and his hands clap when they’re supposed to. He leans forward and presses the green button: opens his mouth and exchanges pleasantries with a couple of faces that are becoming familiar by now _(faces that belong to people who maybe fucked his brother, but he doesn’t let himself think about that)_.

His mind, though, is firmly entrenched within itself. Turning over the plan that they’ll be executing in what he’s been assured will be a few more days at most and looking for flaws. Searching desperately for places that Bela will be able to toss a wrench into the works and fuck everything up in an attempt to secure whatever she wants from Dean. Looking for ways to guard against what he senses is an inevitable betrayal.

The problem is that Bela’s going to be inside the Arena when everything finally goes down. It was her own idea, but a good one: with Bela in sight, it might take Vincent a little longer to connect the attack on his front doors with the prize trapped twelve floors below. Unfortunately, that puts her on the same side of the line as Sam, and too goddamned close to Dean for comfort.

By the time he crawls into bed late that night—or is it early the next morning?—Sam has to admit that there isn’t any way to prevent Bela from making her move. He’s just going to have to be ready to stop her when she does.

 _No dreams tonight,_ he prays as he stares at the ceiling. _Just let me get some real sleep for once._

Prayer or not, he isn’t surprised when the darkness that surrounds his half-dozing mind splits open to reveal a motel room. God’s been ignoring him for over a year: just a sight longer than Sam has been hating God back. One quick, fearful prayer isn’t going to change that.

The motel room Sam finds himself in is the same, non-descript one that he’s seen a thousand times before: dark carpets and walls to hide old stains; scuffed wood furniture; two queen beds, one empty, one piled with familiar bags.

Dean is standing with his hands griping the edge of a bureau, staring into the mirror with fierce concentration.

“Dean,” Sam says, and his brother turns with the slowness of dreams.

Dean’s hair is too long. He’s wearing a choker around his neck: a silver, snarling wolf head. His eyes are brilliant and green, swimming with tears, and there’s a vivid red line on his right cheek. Last night, that mark was a wound, pulled closed with stitches, and tomorrow it will be no more than a memory. The left side of his face is a sunset of bruises.

For a few seconds, Sam is almost blinded with guilt. He’s gone and fallen into Dean’s mind again, and this time his brother is aware and looking at him: he sees Sam here, he _knows_. Sam searches for the words that will explain the violation, for a plea for the forgiveness that he knows Dean won’t be able to offer.

“Sammy,” Dean breathes out on a low exhale. With a burst of that blurred, inhuman speed, he moves and is suddenly standing close enough for Sam to feel the heat of his body.

 _He’s going to hit me,_ Sam thinks with cold clarity, but Dean doesn’t.

Dean grabs him by the hair and hauls him down, and _fuck_ those full lips are even softer than they look. Shocked, Sam gasps and Dean seizes the opening to push his tongue inside Sam’s mouth. Sam moves his own tongue in a hesitant slide along his brother’s and Dean moans into him, filling Sam’s mouth and lungs with spent, Dean-flavored air.

Oh fuck, Dean is _kissing him_.

Relief hits Sam, so fast and intense that it cramps his stomach. He knows what’s happening now: knows that he’s safe in his own head. Dreaming a real, honest to God dream.

Which means that tonight, at least, he can have what he craves.

Sam groans his brother’s name into the kiss and then reaches up to cup Dean’s face. Angling his brother’s head back, he pushes forward. Dean fights him for control of the kiss for a moment, twisting his hands in Sam’s hair, and then he gives a full-bodied shudder and folds. His mouth goes wide and loose, and Sam shoves in like a goddamned virgin, all eager fumbling and lack of finesse.

From the way his brother moans again, low and needy, he doesn’t mind.

Gradually, Sam regains a little more control. He eases off enough to suck Dean’s lower lip into his mouth and goes to work on it while his fingertips caress his brother’s cheekbones. When he fits his mouth back into place over Dean’s an unknown amount of time later, Sam tilts his head and changes the angle, taking the kiss into a deeper, gentler rhythm. Dean’s hands flex in his hair, all of their clever competence destroyed in the face of Sam’s hunger.

Sam could do this forever, but if he’s going to have a reprieve from the darkness for a night—if his mind is going to offer him Dean on a silver platter—then he wants everything. He forces himself to pull back from the kiss and Dean chases him for a moment before he makes himself stop.

Now that Sam’s fears aren’t tormenting him, Dean’s skin is whole and healthy. He looks younger—twenty-six instead of twenty-eight—and his eyes are jade green and dazed. Instead of the wolf’s head choker, he’s wearing the bull-horned amulet that Sam came to accept as a part of his brother over their year together after Stanford.

Sam wraps his hand around the amulet as Dean tries to catch his breath. “Do you trust me?” he asks.

Dean nods jerkily and licks his lips. “Yeah, Sam. ‘Course.”

Sam lets his hand fall away from the amulet and gives his brother’s chest a light shove, knocking him back a step against the foot of the bed. Dean teeters for balance for a moment and then Sam is there, pressing him back and down and following. He catches those sinful lips again: moist and slightly parted and all but begging for Sam’s mouth.

It’s even better the second time around because now he can feel Dean beneath him: Dean’s legs spreading open so that Sam’s body falls into place between them. He can feel the hard line of his brother’s cock pressed against his own erection: Dean flushed and thrusting up with a desperate gasping sound.

So willing. So beautiful. So perfect.

As Sam fumbles for the bottom of his brother’s shirt, his head swims with a curious doubling sensation. He’s drawing up Dean’s worn Metallica t-shirt, he knows he is, but somehow he’s also thumbing open the buttons on a long-sleeved button down. Dean is helping him in both dreams _(visions?)_ , clumsy with need and getting in the way more often than not. Keeps distracting Sam by dropping kisses and bites on his neck and jaw line.

“Let me do this,” Sam growls, frustrated, but Dean doesn’t seem to hear him.

“Need you,” he says, fighting to get at Sam’s skin through his clothing. “God, Sammy, I need this, need it to be you, just once, please.”

Dean’s voice is raw and filled with so much yearning that it turns Sam’s stomach. Something’s wrong: the tone, the voice, the words, they’re all wrong. Sam starts to draw back—catches a glint of silver at the hollow of Dean’s throat, splash of purple across his brother’s cheek—and then Dean yanks him back down.

Dean’s right hand works at Sam’s pants as his left cups the back of his neck, pressing his face down against a broad, pale chest. The ginkgo leaf is right in front of Sam, and his concern melts away in the face of the lust pounding through him. He turns his head to let his tongue and lips finally taste that freckled flesh and the dream tips sideways.

Sam’s naked, they’re both naked, and he has three fingers slicked and moving in and out of Dean’s ass. Dean writhes, fucking himself down on Sam’s hand and moaning. The amulet is a gold glint by his left nipple, and his cock looks painfully hard, curving up toward his stomach and leaking precome as Sam preps him.

“’S good—want—want more—come on, can take it—‘m ready—”

Dean’s legs widen, knees coming up as he tilts his hips to show Sam just how ready he is. Sam watches as his fingers disappear into his brother’s hot, slick center and knows that this is going to kill him. He’s going to have a heart attack before he even gets inside.

“Your cock,” Dean begs, rolling his hips. “In me.”

But Sam can’t make himself stop fucking his brother with his fingers. Dean is so gorgeous like this: strung out and helpless and begging for it. It’s got to be the most beautiful thing that Sam’s ever seen.

Then the queer doubling returns and everything changes. The room’s shadows look like bruises on Dean’s skin, and his eyes aren’t just desperate but broken. He’s crying: weak sobs shaking his body even as he drives himself down onto Sam’s fingers.

“Don’t tease,” he moans. “Don’t—not like that, want it—God, let me feel you—don’t m-make me beg, please, not like—”

 _Them_ , he’s going to say, and Sam knows it. But the word breaks as Sam pulls his fingers free and slams home. It’s like shoving his cock into a furnace: so hot and tight inside, despite the preparation and the lube, that it has to be hurting Dean. Sam immediately tries to pull back out, an apology on his lips, but his brother’s hands are like chains on his hips. Dean’s thighs are trembling, and sweat shines over his pale, unmarked skin in a halo.

“So beautiful,” Sam groans instead, and, “Dean.”

Dean shakes at the sound of his name, sliding his hands up to clutch at Sam’s shoulders. “Again,” he pants. “S-say it a-again.”

“Dean,” Sam repeats obediently. Tries to put everything he feels in that one word: all the love and devotion and irresistible need that have haunted him as long as he can remember. “ _Dean_.”

Dean brings his legs up and hooks them at the small of Sam’s back, crying out as the motion slots Sam deeper. Sam drinks the cry from his brother’s lips like water, like blood, like everything he’s ever yearned for and never thought he could have. He hovers over his brother’s mouth as Dean babbles, words spilling from him in an incoherent rain.

“Fuck me—oh, God, _fuck me_ —want it hard, feel you—just you—so fucking big, Sam, never felt—not like this—so _good_ —I d-didn’t know, I—gotta move, gotta—”

“Shh,” Sam whispers, and then presses their lips more firmly together and cuts off the rest of his brother’s words. There isn’t even a pretense of resistance this time, just Dean opening for him, and Sam can no sooner stop himself from taking what’s being offered than he could stop his heart from beating. He’s too accustomed to saying yes: too used to Dean bending over backwards to give him what he wants.

In real life, of course, Dean would kick Sam’s ass if he tried for so much as a chaste kiss on the cheek, but this is Sam’s dream. Here, Dean wants this as much as he does. Wants it _more_ if the way that he’s doing his best to start a rhythm is any indication.

Sam is determined to make this good for both of them, though, and he makes himself wait for the tight sheath of his brother’s muscles to loosen. When he’s reasonably sure he isn’t going to do any damage, he leans up on one elbow for leverage and touches the side of Dean’s face with his other hand. Dean’s eyes, which slipped closed as he struggled for friction, fly open.

Holding his brother’s gaze with his own, Sam pulls back until he isn’t breaching Dean with anything but the head of his cock, and then thrusts in. He puts his entire body behind the movement, and the impact edges both of them up the bed. Dean gasps and digs his fingers into Sam’s shoulder blades. His muscles tremble helplessly around Sam’s cock, gripping him as he starts the dragging slide out again.

“ _Fuck_ —say something—Sam—wanna h-hear you, please—need to know it’s you—”

“Dean,” Sam pants, offering up the only word he remembers: the only one that ever mattered.

“Love me.” It’s a plea covered by the thin, brittle mask of a command, and for once in his life Sam has no intention of balking.

“Always,” he whispers. “God, Dean, always.”

Then there’s no talking, only the rough noise of their breathing and the slick sounds of sex. Sam works his hand between them and grips his brother’s cock, jacking it awkwardly as his hips speed.

Need blurs the edges of the dream, turning everything ghost-like and leaving Sam disoriented in the midst of his passion. Dean keeps changing beneath him with each thrust until Sam isn’t sure which brother he’s making love to anymore: the invincible man-god who pulled him from his burning apartment or the broken, battered shell from the Arena.

He fucks in and the wolf choker is winking at him.

He pulls out and the amulet digs into his chest.

Not even Sam’s own body is fixed: the scratches on his chest flicker in and out of existence, aching one moment and gone the next.

Dean’s eyes are the only constant: locked on Sam with a mixture of wonder and love that leave him feeling stripped bare and shattered.

Sam isn’t worthy of that kind of look, not when he let Dean down: when he doesn’t know what kind of monster he’s becoming and doesn’t care as long as it gets him his brother back. He isn’t worthy when he’s indulging himself in erotic dreams while Dean heals from Vincent’s latest attack—not the worst he’s had, according to Bela.

In the end, Sam can’t continue to meet his brother’s gaze. He ducks his head, closing his eyes for good measure as he jerks the dream to climax. He can feel the warm splash of semen on his stomach and hand, but he can’t smell it, just like he can’t taste his brother’s sweat-slicked skin. It’s only a dream, after all, with a dream’s weaknesses and limitations.

When Sam comes himself a moment later, it’s a hollow, empty spurt of pleasure. He’s almost grateful when the red bloom of ecstasy against his eyelids blossoms into nightmares of black-eyed, bloodied demons tearing their way through a pack of wolves.

In the morning, he wakes with the remnants of that first dream a flaking, uncomfortable mess between his legs. Sam jerks off again in the shower, remembering the way that Dean felt underneath his hands, remembering how hot it was inside of him, and wishes that he could have—just once—tasted that pale, freckled skin.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The day passes in an absurdity of waiting.

Sam runs hot and cold about seeing his brother again. One minute he’s so anxious to make sure that Dean is all right that his skin is buzzing with it. The next, he’s so guilty over his dream that his stomach roils in rebellion. No matter which emotion is dominating, he can’t make himself sit still or pay more than cursory attention to the continuing negotiations. It isn’t until two o’clock, when Gordon and his friends finally settle into the plan that he and Bela and Bobby have been maneuvering them into, that Sam manages to pull out of himself a little.

“How soon can you be ready to go?” he asks. It’s the first contribution he has made to the conversation in well over an hour.

“I’ll take some time to get everything together,” Gordon answers, still looking over the plan of the Arena’s grounds. “We couldn’t exactly bring that kind of equipment with us on the flight.”

Sam understands that there are probably about a hundred federal regulations against transporting grenades and assault rifles on commercial airlines, but the added delay still chafes. “How soon, Gordon?” he repeats.

“I know a guy,” Kubrick speaks up. “Over in Indian Springs. He might be able to supply us with a few things.”

Gordon looks up at that, fingers still soothing absently over the paper in front of him. “How well do you know him?” he asks.

Kubrick gives one of those wide, empty smiles that send shivers down Sam’s spine and says, “We was in Bible camp together when we was kids. He’s good folk.”

Gordon stares at Kubrick, mouth twitching slightly, and Sam can’t tell if the man is trying not to laugh or to keep from frowning. Sam has seen him struggle with both reactions whenever Kubrick brings up God or organized religion: it’s anybody’s guess how the two men became … not friends, exactly, but allies. Whatever his opinions concerning Kubrick’s faith, though, Gordon must trust the man’s abilities. Otherwise, he never would have brought him along.

Sure enough, there’s no doubt on Gordon’s face when he turns his attention to Sam and says, “Depending on how well-stocked Kubrick’s friend is, we could be ready to go as soon as tomorrow. Or it might be as long as three or four days. Is Dean going to be ready?”

The question catches Sam off guard and he blinks down at his hands before belatedly lying, “Of course.”

He doesn’t know how he can have been this stupid. He’s been to see Dean twice now and, while he can perhaps be forgiven for his distraction during their first reunion, there was no reason not to have mentioned Bela and their plans to get Dean out when he went back a second time.

No, he reminds himself, there _was_ a reason. Sam didn’t bring it up because Dean didn’t want to hear about it. That much was obvious.

If Dean had been at all interested in leaving—if he cared about anything other than getting Sam out of the Arena as fast as he could—then he would have been full of questions. How did Sam find him, how was he paying for Dean’s time, what was he planning, did Bobby know where he was?

Instead, Sam got flat, disinterested stares. He got sharp words designed to draw blood and twist Sam up inside so that he couldn’t think straight. He got Dean drinking: Dean with his walls raised, all the doors bolted shut and the windows barred.

Oh God, what if he _won’t_ come?

Sam’s gut goes icily cold for a moment and then he remembers his conversation with Geri. The wolf told him that Dean would go if he could find some way out. It wasn’t lying, and Sam doesn’t think that even the Gleipnir can keep the wolf from his brother’s subconscious at this point—the soul bleed has gone too far for that—so it knew what it was talking about.

No, Dean will come. He’ll bitch about it and do his best to drive Sam insane _preventing_ it, but when it comes down to it, he’ll move.

“He’ll be ready,” Sam repeats more strongly.

“Good,” Gordon says and then pushes up from the table. “We’ll be in touch.”


	20. Bought and Paid For

The Protean charms are back on the outside where they belong when Sam returns to the Arena at five o’clock, and passing them was just as painful as he thought it would be. Most of the discomfort has faded by the time he reaches the suite, though, so he sits down on the couch to wait for his brother.

The small wolf statue Dean was playing with on Sam’s first visit to the suite catches his eyes and when he looks closer he finds that it’s more of Vincent’s work. Now that he’s met Geri, Sam knows that it isn’t the right species. Dean’s passenger isn’t a timber wolf. It isn’t an eastern wolf or a Carpathian wolf either. No, Geri is … well, it’s a kind of amalgamation of what is means to be _wolf_ , having at once the characteristics of all wolves and yet belonging to none of the subspecies.

Shifting on the couch, Sam touches his chest lightly where the scratches are. They’re almost healed by now, either because they were left by something with no actual physical form or just because Sam has always been a fast healer, although he has nothing on Dean these days. Still aches a little to press against them, though, and Sam makes himself lower his hand again.

When the door swings open less than four minutes later and Dean steps inside, a full-bodied, surround-sound memory of last night’s dream slams into Sam. Dean’s full lips press against his, Dean’s fingers dig into his back, Dean’s legs tighten where they’re hooked around his hips, pulling Sam deeper into that slick warmth. The memory releases him only reluctantly, leaving him hard and slightly feverish.

Sam is worried for a moment that Dean will notice—all it would take is a quick glance: Sam’s face is saran wrap transparent right now—but Dean doesn’t look. Dean shuts the door behind himself and heads straight for the bar without any sign that he’s even noticed Sam is there.

Embarrassment, closely followed by anger, heat Sam’s face further. After everything that Sam has gone through for him, the least Dean can do is acknowledge his presence. The dark place in his mind pulses in response to his rising emotions and he shoves it away. He isn’t going to use his power against Dean, no matter how frustrating his brother is being.

Instead, Sam forces himself to wait. Maybe Dean just needs some time to pull himself together. Settling back against the couch, he examines his brother with a critical eye. From the careful way that Dean is moving, it’s obvious that he’s still injured. His left leg drags almost imperceptibly on the rug as he walks, and the long-sleeved button down covering his torso keeps catching on something as he breathes—a bandage, Sam guesses.

He rakes his gaze over the few exposed bits of his brother’s skin as Dean pours himself a glass of whisky. The knuckles on Dean’s right hand are scabbed over, and there’s a bruise high on his left cheekbone. The rest of the damage is either hidden or already healed: of the cut that had to be stitched shut, not even a faint scar remains.

Sam lets his gaze slip from his brother’s skin to the curl of hair at the nape of his neck: the way it falls soft and natural back from his temples. The new look bothers him suddenly: both the cut, which softens what few edges Dean’s face has into sensual lines, and the length, which is just long enough to give Dean’s ‘companions’ something to hold onto but not long enough to get in his way when he’s fighting.

It’s a small thing—insignificant in the face of everything else Vincent has done to his brother—but it’s a visible sign for Sam to fixate on. Anger is hot in his mouth: metallic. On top of everything else, Dean’s attitude—the sheer stubbornness of him—feeds that fire like lighter fluid.

Sam _knows_ that Dean’s façade is nothing more than another straw soldier: he caught a glimpse of the self-hatred and rage lurking inside his brother two nights ago, after all. But no matter how hard he bashes his head against Dean’s walls, Sam has yet to have been rewarded with a single crack. And now this: Dean _ignoring_ him like a sulky five-year-old.

Despite his rising frustration, Sam manages to hold his peace until Dean begins to sip his second drink. Then he realizes that Dean is perfectly willing to spend the rest of the night ignoring him and has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting.

When the urge passes, Sam gets up from the couch and heads toward his brother. Dean doesn’t look around at his approach, but Sam knows that his brother hears him: Dean’s entire posture has shifted into something defensive. Almost frightened.

It only frustrates Sam further.

He draws to a stop in the doorway and leans against the lintel. “So that speed healing really comes in handy, huh?” he says.

Dean pauses with the glass halfway to his mouth and then gives his shoulders a little hitch. “It doesn’t suck.”

Pressing his lips together, Sam thinks of all the ways that he could respond to that answer, and then reins himself in again. “So what’d you do to piss him off?” he asks. He can hear the tension in his voice; prays that Dean hears it as well and knows what it means. That Dean _cares_ what it means because damned if Sam knows what he’s going to do if he loses control of himself tonight.

There are gold-gilded mirrors on the far wall, and pieces of Dean’s face are caught in their surfaces. A down-turned eye here. A sliver of chin there. Fractured perfection. In one mirror, an ornate monstrosity with roses twined through the frame, Sam catches the twist of his brother’s lips.

“I told him Don Johnson wanted his suit back.”

There’s no moment of thought before action. There’s barely even time for Sam to feel the last threads of his restraint snap before he’s across the room. He clamps one hand around Dean’s upper arm and jerks him around. Alcohol sloshes over both of their feet and pant legs as Dean drops the glass onto the rug, where it rolls a few inches before coming to a stop.

“This isn’t a fucking _joke_!” Sam hisses.

Dean’s eyes are wide, almost like he’s surprised, although how he ever could have thought Sam would take that kind of flippancy sitting down Sam doesn’t know. Then Sam looks closer and realizes that Dean’s irises are nothing more than thin rings of moss. He takes in the pallor of his brother’s face and notices the beads of sweat on his forehead.

Realization of what he’s doing—of his hand clamped bruising-tight on Dean’s arm, of the rough way he yanked his brother around—floods Sam with guilt that he can’t show. Anything less than cold anger only ever gets him one of Dean’s many masks, and Sam can’t risk his brother reading an apology as a sign of weakness right now. Slowly, he loosens his grip and lets his hand fall to his side.

Dean doesn’t move, holding himself with that eerie stillness that only wild creatures are capable of. Waiting to see what Sam is going to do now.

Sam squares his jaw and swallows. Opens his mouth and, without thinking about it, says, “Take your shirt off.”

“What, again?” It’s an attempted scoff, but it comes out more as a rasp. Either the pain or Sam’s repeated efforts—both, maybe—are taking their toll, and Sam can finally see the messy churn of emotion behind Dean’s eyes. He doesn’t have to work to read fear in the way his brother’s lower lip trembles slightly.

Sam’s fingers twitch with the need to still the tremble. He wants so badly to trail them across his brother’s shaking mouth: wants it with an intensity that hurts. But if he yields to that urge, he isn’t going to be able to make himself stop there. He’s going to let the insistent memories from last night drive him on until he’s kissing those lips: is going to find out if Dean will open for him as easily in the waking world as he did in the dream.

Right now, Sam is pretty sure Dean will. Before Vincent, before the wolf, if Sam had pulled a stunt like that, Dean would have punched him and left him spitting blood onto the floor. Now, though, he’s too used to people taking what they want from him. Too used to not being able to say ‘no.’ The fact that it’s Sam is only going to make it easier for him to surrender.

Sam’s hand starts to come up slowly as more and more of the present slips away into memories of the dream. God, Dean’s eyes are so _green_ : a color only made more intense by the flecks of amber in his irises. Were those always there, or is that Geri peeking out?

Sam can already feel the phantom press of Dean’s skin against his fingertips: the slide of Dean’s leg down his flank. He wants, he _needs_ …

He brushes the corner of Dean’s jaw with one finger, feather light, and Dean flinches. There’s a bruised, beaten expression in his eyes.

Oh God, what the hell is Sam doing?

Even with the jolt of nausea burning through his body, it’s a struggle to force his thoughts back into safer channels. As he lowers his hand again, Sam is far too aware of how near that miss was.

It would be safer to take back the order _(the last thing he needs right now is to see more of Dean’s skin)_ but he knows that he won’t. Despite his decidedly non-fraternal feelings and the growing darkness inside of him—which Sam suspects is at least partly responsible for his increasing inability to control himself—he’s still Dean’s brother. And he still needs to make sure that Dean is okay. He needs to see what’s left of the damage and add it to Vincent’s tab.

Hardening his expression, Sam repeats, “Take it off.” The tone of voice is borrowed from Dad, and although Sam has never had to use it before, he’s heard it often enough to mimic it perfectly.

Just as he hopes, his brother responds automatically. Dean’s hands go to the top button on his shirt, just below the silver wolf’s head, and start to work. He already has three buttons open before awareness of his own unthinking obedience floods his eyes. Dean’s face goes sullen and resentful, but it isn’t Sam’s fault that he trained himself to respond to that tone. Besides, in the face of everything else he’s done—everything he’s thought of doing—it would be a little ridiculous to feel guilty about using that habit against his brother.

Although Dean is conscious of what he’s doing now, he doesn’t stop. Just presents Sam with his back as he finishes undoing his buttons. The turn gives them some needed space and Sam’s skin pebbles in goose bumps at the cool rush of air between them.

Dean shrugs his shirt off slowly—partly from reluctance, Sam suspects, but mostly because moving hurts. It’s a sick parody of a strip tease, the slide of fabric revealing not enticing skin but the aftermath of a vicious beating. The rush of appalled blood to Sam’s head leaves him dizzy and weak.

Mottled purple and green smudges Dean’s back. Scabbed-over cuts pepper the bruising where some of his attackers kicked hard enough to break the skin. The bandage that Sam noticed Dean’s shirt catching against is heavy and white and awkward-looking on his side.

“Jesus,” Sam whispers. His skin aches as though he’s the one who was beaten.

When Dean turns around, his front is just as bad. Moving has to be not just painful but agonizing. No wonder he’s holding himself so stiffly.

“You should see the other guys,” he deadpans.

Sam _saw_ the other guys and he’s suddenly much less bothered by what Dean did to them. They deserved it. With a little difficulty, he swallows and then nods.

“I’m gonna kill them,” he says. It isn’t in the plan, but hell, plans were made to be altered, right? Maybe Gordon and his friends can get their hands on some heavy explosives: turn the entire fucking Arena into a smoking hole in the ground.

Dean’s eyes shift to the side uneasily and he starts pulling his shirt back on. “Don’t,” he sighs.

“Don’t kill them or don’t care?” Sam bites out.

“Don’t start this crap again.”

Sam watches his brother work at the buttons for a few seconds and then asks, “What do you want from me, Dean? Huh? You really want me to go? You want me to leave you here to get fucked and beaten until you don’t remember who you are anymore?”

Keeping his eyes firmly on his fingers, Dean answers, “What part of ‘leave and don’t come back’ did you not get the last five times?”

It isn’t as though Sam actually expected an honest answer from his brother, but that still hurts. His voice is rough when he says, “Well, I’m sorry, man, but that isn’t going to happen.”

Now Dean looks up. A hostile half-smirk lifts one side of his mouth. “You really are a selfish son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“One of us has to be,” Sam shoots back. “Damn it, Dean, would you just think of yourself for once instead of playing the martyr?”

Dean’s eyes narrow. “I _am_ thinking of myself. You don’t seem to get it, Sam. If I don’t get my shot, then I’m no different from the shit we used to hunt.”

Sam’s mind gives him a flash of Dean’s fist smashing repeatedly into his opponent’s face, of Dean moving faster than the human eye can follow, and then substitutes a woman in as the victim. A child. He shoves the image away before his skin can start to crawl. That’s not going to happen. He won’t let it.

“So we’ll bring some of the Gleipnir with us. Find a chemist to reverse engineer it. Bobby must know someone—or, or maybe Ash …” He trails off at the sudden bloom of fear across his brother’s face.

“What?” he asks, frustration fading in the face of Dean’s anxiety. “Dean, _what_?”

“I never told you what he calls it.”

Oops.

“Vincent told me,” Sam lies quickly, but Dean is shaking his head and backing further away.

“He wouldn’t. No way he talks about shit like that with a client.”

Chest clenching in dismay at how quickly this conversation went south on him, Sam steps closer and reaches out toward his brother. “Dean—”

“How the fuck do you know that, Sam?” Dean demands, and then slaps his hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Sam raises both of his hands, palms out, but Dean doesn’t settle.

Dean’s reaction strikes Sam as completely out of proportion with the situation, but he isn’t too surprised by it. His brother has locked himself up so tightly that it must be like a pressure cooker in there: emotions pushing unbearably against his skin until he has to let _something_ out or explode.

The fact that Sam knows the drug’s name isn’t really the issue. No, this is about Sam being here in the first place. About Sam seeing Dean, about Sam knowing what’s been done to him, about Sam putting himself in danger. It’s about what this place—what _Vincent_ —has done to Dean.

The Gleipnir is just a convenient excuse.

“Does he know who you are?” Dean asks sharply. “Jesus, tell me you weren’t stupid enough to tell him.”

Sam could try lying again—could say that he found that information in the Arena’s computer banks—but if Dean catches him then this is going to fly even further off the rails. And as much as he wants to break through Dean’s defenses, he doesn’t want it to happen like this. Not over something stupid that Dean is concentrating on so that he doesn’t have to deal with the real problem. So that he can shove it all back underneath the rugs as soon as Sam turns his back.

No, when Dean finally breaks it’s going to be underneath a glaring spotlight where he can’t hide anything: where Sam can see every last shard he has to reassemble.

Right now, though, Dean’s breath is speeding and his brow is furling and it’s obvious that he’s taking Sam’s hesitation the wrong way: leaping to all of the hasty, over-protective conclusions that are going to derail this conversation for good.

“He doesn’t know,” Sam says, speaking quickly but calmly. “I know what Vincent calls it because I had a dream, and I heard Vincent say it.”

Dean licks his lips, just a brief flash of tongue, and the creases in his forehead soften. “A dream? Like with Jess?”

About the future, Dean means. Sam is pretty sure that Dean would buy it if he answers ‘yes’, but he already knows that he’s going to finish telling his brother the truth. It’s going to hurt, but in the right way: shoving Dean further toward the breakdown that Sam wants—needs—him to have. More importantly, there’s something that he has to clear up. It’s been festering inside of his brother for far too long.

“I saw you wake up after they took you,” he says. “Not—not on the plane, in a cell.”

Dean jerks, his hand half-rising in the old, habitual gesture that Sam doesn’t even realize he’s been missing until he sees it. Dean reaching for the security of the amulet that isn’t there anymore.

“You what?” he says in a strangled whisper.

“Dean—” Sam starts, reaching out again.

This time Dean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t back away. He just gives Sam’s hand a single, unfriendly glance and Sam abandons the gesture. He doesn’t know what he was planning on doing anyway. The idea of pulling Dean in for a comforting hug is laughable, considering the circumstances.

“That was private,” Dean says. “You had no fucking right—”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Sam protests. “It’s not something I can control; it just happens.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure you tried real hard to stop it.”

“No, I loved every second of it,” Sam snaps sarcastically, and then immediately continues, “Of course I tried to snap out of it! You think I _enjoyed_ watching them do that to you? You think I liked seeing you hurt? Alone? Jesus Christ, Dean, I heard you call for me—the first fucking thing you said was my name and I wasn’t there.”

Dean blinks, taken aback. Uneasiness flickers across his face. “I didn’t—”

“Yeah, you did,” Sam tells him. He can tell that Dean is unsettled by the information—that he’s feeling more exposed than he’d like—and isn’t surprised when his brother drags a hand across his face and turns away.

“Well, that’s just great,” Dean mutters as he walks over to the table. Leaning on it, he tilts his head so that Sam catches his profile and then asks, “You got anything else to spring on me?”

Now would be the time to fill Dean in on the demon-control, and the telekinesis, and most especially the trip he took into his brother’s mind a few nights ago. But telling Dean about the demons would only worry him. Telling him about the telekinesis and the headaches that initially accompanied it but have since faded would result in a freak out and a demand that he promise not to practice any more: a promise that Sam can’t make.

And if Dean feels this violated over the dream, then telling him that he was actually inside of his head—that he talked to Geri—would probably be the worst thing that Sam could do right now.

So he holds the words in his mouth and shakes his head.

Dean drops his own head in a nod and taps his fingers against the table. “It got better,” he says after a moment. “What you saw, it hasn’t been—they take care of me.”

The fact that Dean is defending these sons of bitches, even if it’s just in a lame attempt to make Sam feel better, turns Sam’s stomach. “I’ve seen how they take care of you, Dean,” he says. “You don’t treat people like that.”

“Yeah, well I’m not ‘people’, am I?” Dean glances at him over one shoulder and for a moment his eyes aren’t green but gold, the wolf’s power shining out. It’s both alike and worlds apart from meeting Geri’s gaze. Disconcertingly, Dean’s strikes Sam as the more dangerous of the two.

He wonders suddenly: is it the animal spirits who drive berserkers mad, or is mankind the souring force in that equation?

Dean’s eyes cool to moss again and he says, “I belong here. And I’m safer here than out there. You and I both know that even without the wolf it was only a matter of time. There’s a reason the hunting gig doesn’t come with a retirement plan.”

“You belong with me,” Sam responds firmly.

Dean turns around to face him fully and sits on the edge of the table. “This isn’t open for discussion, Sam.”

Sam considers pursuing the matter further and then realizes that he’s letting his brother distract him from what he wanted to say when he started this conversation in the first place. He doesn’t bother easing into it: there are too many ways Dean could squirm his way onto a tangent when left with even a single opening. Besides, Dean isn’t going to hear what Sam is saying—isn’t going to _understand_ —unless it’s stated in the most direct way possible.

“Bobby doesn’t have anything to do with you being here.”

For a moment Dean stares at him blankly—the abruptness of the non sequitur, or maybe it’s just too difficult for him to even consider what Sam is saying. Then his face gives a tiny little twitch, forehead crinkling and mouth drawing tight. He turns away again, leaning his full weight on the table and staring at the far wall. The line of his back is stiff with tension that has to hurt: that is screaming at Sam to shut up, to drop it.

Instead, Sam moves closer and repeats, “Bobby didn’t sell you out, man. You think I’d be here if he had? You think I’d be _anywhere_ but six feet underground in Lawrence?”

Dean whirls sharply at that, his face stormy with denial, and barks, “You ever fucking _consider_ offing yourself and I’ll kill you myself, I swear to God.”

The absurdity of that threat makes Sam laugh. “Right back at you, man.”

Dean offers him a cold smile that’s more a baring of teeth than anything else and says, “Don’t worry. Vincent’s got me under so much fucking surveillance I can’t take a piss without five people knowing about it.”

Sam knows that it can’t be as simple as that. If his brother really wanted out, he’d find a way—there aren’t any cameras in here, for instance: no guards. Vincent is either holding something else over Dean’s head to keep him from taking drastic measures, or he’s been very careful to leave him with just enough hope to keep going.

As if Dean senses the tenor of Sam’s thoughts, he adds, “Besides, I don’t want to die. Fucking wolf has its claws too deep in me for that. I’ve never—I never knew anything could want to live that badly.” He shakes his head and then finishes, “I’m past saving, Sam, so just drop it already.”

In the midst of his concern, Sam realizes that Dean has done it again: taken the conversation and sent it spinning down paths designed to distract him. To push him away. He’s not letting Dean get away with it this time, but he can’t stop himself from answering his brother’s words first.

“You’re my brother, Dean,” he says softly. “You’re never going to be past saving.”

Something in Dean’s eyes goes bleak at that, like he’s just realized that Sam is never going to give up no matter what Dean throws at him. Sam wishes that realization didn’t leave his brother looking so damned.

Forcing himself to meet Dean’s gaze, he continues, “But we weren’t talking about that. We were talking about Bobby.”

“I heard you,” Dean mutters, starting to turn away again.

Sam crosses the last few inches between them and this time he grabs his brother’s wrist despite all of the warning signs to keep his distance. “Bobby didn’t sell you to Vincent.”

There’s that twitch across Dean’s features again and this time Sam recognizes it for what it is: a desperate attempt on his brother’s part to hold off tears. Dean shoves at his chest, but it’s a weak attempt. Readjusting his hold on his brother’s wrist, Sam crowds Dean up against the side of the table so that he has nowhere to go.

“He didn’t,” Sam repeats softly, and Dean shudders.

For a moment, Sam thinks this is it: Dean is going to splinter to pieces against him and finally admit that he isn’t all right, that he’s hurting, that he needs Sam to get him out of here. Then Dean shuts his eyes and when he opens them again they’re as blank as ever.

“Okay. Fine. Bobby didn’t sell me out. Fantastic. Now let go of me before I kick your ass.”

Frustration simmers across Sam’s skin like a heat-mirage on hot asphalt. He trembles on the edge of doing something monumentally stupid, and isn’t sure if it’s going to come out sexual or violent with Dean’s body pressed up against his like this. Taking a deep, slow breath, he forces himself to loosen his grip on his brother’s wrist.

Dean slides out from between Sam and the table and walks over to retrieve his glass from the rug. He’s moving easier now, and Sam wonders absently whether it’s because he’s still healing or if Dean is using the pain to center himself. He wants to continue their conversation—wants to keep pounding at Dean’s walls until they shatter—but at this rate Sam is going to break before his brother and that won’t do either of them any good. He needs to step back for a few minutes: get hold of his emotions.

Makes this a perfect opportunity to take care of some business.

“We’re almost ready to get you out,” he says.

Mixing himself a drink at the bar, Dean doesn’t give any indication that he heard Sam.

“Bobby’s here,” Sam adds, hoping for some kind of reaction.

Dean’s shoulders work as he screws the cap back onto the bottle of Jack Daniels.

“And Gordon Walker, you remember him?”

No answer.

“There’s an emergency exit on the bottom floor by the cells. I’m going to bring you out that way.”

Dean finally turns. For a fraction of a second, there’s so much terror on Dean’s face that Sam’s heart beats quicker in response. Then it’s gone, replaced by a haughty, closed expression.

“I’m gonna say this one more time, and you’d better listen up because it’s also gonna be the _last_ time. I’m not going anywhere. You and Bobby and Gordon Walker can make all the plans you want, but when the time comes I’m not gonna cooperate. So you might as well drop it before Vincent catches you with your hand in the cookie jar.”

Sam’s stomach sinks down to the floor. He felt confident that Dean would come with him earlier, but the way Dean said that—so matter-of-factly—is making him doubt. Oh God, what if Dean _doesn’t_ cooperate? What if, when the time comes, he just sits there on the couch and stares at Sam with the same, eat-shit-and-die look on his face that he’s wearing right now?

 _Geri said he’d come,_ he reminds himself. _It said he wants to get out of here._

Yeah, but what if the wolf is wrong? What if _Sam’s_ wrong, and Geri doesn’t have any connection to Dean at all when he’s on the Gleipnir? What if all of that was just wishful thinking on the wolf’s part? Damn it, if Dean balks at the crucial moment, Vincent’s going to—to—

And just like that, Sam’s fear is gone. Because Dean is right: if he doesn’t cooperate, Vincent’s going to catch them. He’s going to catch _Sam_.

Dean is never going to let that happen.

“You’re bluffing,” Sam says.

Dean shrugs. “Believe what you want. You will anyway.” Taking a sip from his glass, he steps away from the bar.

“Where’re you going?” Sam asks.

“To sleep,” Dean tosses over his shoulder as he heads for the bedroom. “I’m tired, and I feel like shit, and I have to fight tomorrow. We’re done here.”

But he doesn’t stop Sam from trailing after him: doesn’t slam the door in his face. Sam almost wishes he would—at least then he’d feel like he was getting to his brother. This—Dean digging through a drawer without so much as a glance in his direction—makes him feel like a stranger. He hesitates just inside the door, watching Dean toss a pair of boxers and a loose t-shirt onto the bed.

“Is this really your room?” he asks.

Leaning against the dresser, Dean takes another drink from his glass. “They usually let me stay here when I have appointments.”

 _Appointments_ , Sam thinks. He glances at the bed with its crimson damask drapes: wolves padding across the fabric in gold and carmine patterns. The black sheets look cool and inviting, and his fingers twitch with the illusionary brush of silk. Dean’s pale skin would glow against that darkness. His eyes would gleam so green …

Jerking his gaze away, Sam finds himself staring at the TV screen that masquerades as a window. The night sky lies over the desert, overcast and starless tonight. An illusion of open spaces—of freedom—almost two hundred and fifty feet below ground. Is it for the clients? Or is its only purpose to mock Dean with what he can’t have: what he’ll never see again unless he’s being loaded on a plane and moved to another venue?

Sam’s throat is filled with pain suddenly, and his eyes sting. He doesn’t mean to say anything, but the “I’m sorry,” slips out without his permission.

Caught by the tone maybe, or by the tears he can hear in Sam’s voice, Dean finally looks at him. His voice is almost kind when he says, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Sam.”

Rationally, Sam knows that’s true. It isn’t his fault that Dean’s here. But that doesn’t stop him from _feeling_ responsible. And he’s tired of fighting every single one of his emotions. Talking with Dean is like negotiating a minefield while wearing a blindfold and juggling swords one-handed and he just _can’t_ anymore.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all of this,” he chokes out.

The nearly imperceptible tenderness in Dean’s eyes disappears immediately. “I didn’t have to ‘go through’ shit,” he says. “It’s just sex.”

“It’s rape.”

It falls from Sam’s lips like it’s just another word, but it isn’t—oh God, it _isn’t_ —and saying it makes it true, makes all of this real, and any hope Sam had of controlling himself is melting away like last dirtied clumps of April snow.

Dean’s eyes are steady on him. Pitiless and unflinching. “It’s not rape if you enjoy it.”

Nausea isn’t a strong enough word to describe Sam’s reaction to that. His whole body crawls in revolt.

“Please tell me you don’t actually believe that,” he begs.

“Just because you have a problem with sex doesn’t mean everyone else does.” Dean responds in a flat, almost scornful voice.

If the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then Sam is certifiable because they've _had_ this conversation before, and he _knows_ where it leads, and he still says, “I know you, Dean. I can tell you aren’t okay with this.”

Dean downs the dregs of his drink and then utters a cutting laugh. “Oh, I’m terrific,” he says, putting the glass down on top of the dresser.

Sam thinks of Dean straddling that gladiator’s body in the cage two nights ago. Of the wet sound his brother’s fists made when they pounded the man’s skull and flesh into a fine paste. His throat is clogged with bile, but he manages to force out, “Yeah, right. You’re being forced to kill people and prostitute yourself, and you’re ‘terrific.’”

Dean’s eyes flicker over, as sharp as they can get through the Gleipnir. “And which part of that statement bothers you more, Sam? The killing … or the fucking?” He pushes away from the dresser and starts unbuttoning his shirt again. Every flick of his fingers deliberate. His eyes heavy on Sam’s.

Sam’s mouth is instantly dry. Despite the churn of emotion inside of him, his body flushes with heat. “Wha—what’re you doing?” he rasps.

“Well, you’re so interested in my sex life. Thought I’d give you a show.” Dean pushes his shirt open and just like driving past one of those fatal, three-car smash ups on the highway: Sam can’t help but look. In the short time since he last saw the damage, the bruising on his brother’s skin has perceptibly faded. The scabbed cuts are almost completely gone. Dean peels the bandage from his side and there’s nothing but a thick, angry red welt beneath it.

“You want to know what it’s like?” Dean asks, tossing the bandage aside and moving closer. “You want to know how I fuck them? You want to hear how I moan and tell them I want it?”

His shirt flutters to the floor as well, and he drags one hand across his lower stomach. His muscles twitch in the wake of the caress.

“Makes them feel special, taming the wild Fenrir,” he continues. His voice is cruel now, and heavy with mocking. Sam can’t tell whether Dean’s angry with him or if his brother is just pissed at himself. His back collides with something hard and he realizes that his brother has backed him up into the wall. Dean is right in front of him now, blocking any escape attempt that Sam might have made if he’d been thinking at all rationally.

“You want to hear how they taste?” Dean whispers, his voice low and full of promise. “How wet the women are before I even really get going?” He cocks his head, lips twitching into a self-deprecating smile. “Or maybe you want to hear about the men.”

“Stop it,” Sam rasps.

Dean snorts and steamrolls right over the weak protest. “Hell, maybe you want a demonstration, is that it? You’re paying for it: might as well get your money’s worth.”

He sinks to his knees with a fluid motion, eyes still raised to Sam’s and filled with challenge. It’s obvious as hell that he’s only trying to provoke Sam into hitting him—trying to push this into something he’s more comfortable with: something physical and violent—but instead of batting Dean away or swearing at him like a normal brother would, Sam’s breath hitches.

Dean stares up at him for a long, spinning moment. There shouldn’t be surprise there—not after Sam all but caressed his lips less than half an hour earlier, not after the tension between them three nights ago, not after what happened when Sam was sixteen and coming into this sickness for the first time. There shouldn’t be, but there is. Utter and complete, wide-eyed, jaw-dropped surprise.

Sam’s throat works as he tries to stammer some kind of excuse, an apology, _something_ , but he’s naked beneath his brother’s stare. Dean’s face hardens suddenly and he reaches for Sam’s pants, popping open the top button and pulling down the zipper and Jesus Christ Sam should be stopping him, he should be—

Dean’s hand shoves inside, pushing past Sam’s open pants and down his briefs, and closes around his cock. Sam lets out an involuntary moan and digs his fingers into the wall. He’s hard: of course he’s hard. Dean’s mouth is inches away, Dean’s hand is wrapped around him, softer than it has any right to be and gentler than Sam deserves.

Dean makes a harsh little laugh and when he glances up at Sam again, there’s something wounded in his eyes. Something that looks far too much like betrayal for Sam’s liking.

“Figures,” he says bitterly.

“Dean,” Sam finally manages as his brain catches up to his body and tries to put the brakes on this disaster.

But Dean’s hands are sure and quick, as clever pulling Sam’s cock out from the slit of his boxers as they ever were tying bowties or cleaning guns. Before Sam can figure out how to make his arms work so he can push his brother away, Dean is leaning forward and _holy fuck_ that’s Dean’s mouth, wet and hot and shuddering around him.

“Dean!” Sam shouts. It should be a protest but it isn’t.

Dean’s hands clamp down on Sam’s hips, holding him steady while he licks and sucks and does things to the sensitive head of Sam’s cock that Sam didn’t think were possible. Dean’s devouring him like he’s starving, making hungry little noises that shiver down Sam’s spine like electricity.

Sam stares down at his brother and all he can see is the top of Dean’s head, and the curve of his upper back and shoulders. The wolf tattoo seems to be winking at him upside down: Thurisaz inverted now and at the root of the design. The sight of the rune digs into Sam’s soul like the thorn it takes its name from.

It’s a sign from the universe, staring at that rune while Dean suckles relentlessly at him. Thurisaz, the fire rune. Thurisaz, which represents harmful obsessions, and destructive force, and violent passion. Thurisaz the gateway, and Sam’s desire is opening that door and shoving both of them through.

This is betrayal at its worst and so fucking _wrong_ —he _knows_ it’s wrong, damn it, and he can’t make himself pull away. Having Dean like this—the real Dean this time, and not a dream—is too good: better than he imagined it would be.

Dean’s tongue flicks against the head of Sam’s cock expertly. It presses against the slit and rubs just under the crown with wet, dragging caresses. Sam wants—needs—to know what it would feel like to be buried completely inside that warm cavern, wants Dean’s lips pressed all the way up against his stomach, wants to dig his hands into that soft, silky hair and hold Dean still while he thrusts.

Wants more.

As Dean gives a particularly firm suck, with just the right amount of pressure to stay on the safe side of painful, Sam realizes that he’s receiving the benefits of countless other blowjobs. Other men have been paying to put their dicks in Dean’s mouth: paying to fuck him. The anger that rises is colored with jealousy, fuels his need to take, to let this happen, and Sam lets his head thump back against the wall in surrender.

Which is, perversely, when Dean decides to pull back.

“How’m I doing?” he asks, tilting his face up to look at Sam. His lips are spit-slick, already swollen with use, and the bruise on his cheek is gone. He’d be an advertisement for debauchery if not for the vacant disinterest of his eyes. “This as good as you were hoping or do you want more?”

Sam knows what Dean’s offering, and he wants it. God help him, but he wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything else. Last night’s dream isn’t helping, providing him with false memories that he yearns to replace with real ones: a tasteless, scentless fuck that Dean is offering to color in for him. All Sam has to do is say the word and he can sink inside of his brother as deep as he can force himself. He can have Dean’s legs wrapped around his waist and Dean’s fingers digging into his back and he can finally— _finally_ —taste the ginkgo constellation that’s haunted him for the last eight years.

But he can’t have that endlessly deep expression of love and need and trust in his brother’s eyes. He can have Dean’s body, but he can’t have _Dean_ , and that just isn’t enough.

Now that Dean’s mouth isn’t on him, he’s coming back to himself a little as well. Horror is seeping in around his arousal, and he can’t believe he let it go this far.

“Stop.” The word is weak, but audible, and he can see the hint of a question in Dean’s eyes. He clears his throat and repeats, more strongly, “Dean, stop, you don’t—you don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to.”

Now Dean will get up and storm away from him or he’ll go remorseful and apologetic, and either way Sam can tuck himself back in and they can pretend this never happened. Or rather, Dean can pretend and Sam can turn the sordid, filthygood memory over in his head when he reacquaints his cock with his fist in the shower.

But instead Dean’s eyes go flinty. “Not good enough, huh?” he says. “Funny, but I never heard anyone complain before. Sure, it took a few times to figure out what I was doing, but I’m a quick learner. Got it all down pat now: trick is to keep your jaw loose, let the saliva build up. It’s messy as hell, but effective.”

Hearing Dean talk about this like it’s just another skill—hearing his straight brother discuss the mechanics of giving a blowjob like it’s in any way comparable to firing a gun or fixing the transmission on the Impala—has the twisted, double effect of disgusting Sam and fanning his jealousy. Dean is still kneeling with his mouth close enough to Sam’s hard cock that every breath bathes him in warm air: kneeling in position like he wants Sam to do something about it.

Maybe—probably—he does. Sam knows that his brother is more than fucked up enough to push this until it breaks them both beyond repair.

“Don’t,” he whispers.

“Deep-throating is trickier, of course, but it’s all a matter of concentration and practice. You’ve got to make adjustments depending on the size and shape.” His eyes dip and he licks his lips, making Sam’s cock twitch of its own accord. “I’ve sucked some sweet cocks, Sammy, but yours takes the cake. Nice and full on the tongue … thick … so fucking long.”

When he looks up again, there’s a calculating glint in his eyes. “Anyone ever manage to get that whole thing down? Don’t think Jess could’ve managed it, delicate girl like that, but I bet I can. Bet I can swallow you down all the way … drink you dry.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sam breathes. He doesn’t know how it’s possible for him to be so horrified and so horny at the same time.

Dean’s mouth widens in a smirk. “Like the sound of that, huh?” He reaches out and grasps Sam’s cock with a sudden movement and Sam’s gut lurches pleasantly. Stroking slowly, Dean continues, “Wonder how you’d taste. Did you know that spunk’s got a whole variety of flavors? Naw, you probably don’t. Take it from me, though, every guy tastes different. Get a guy in here once a month tastes like vanilla yogurt, I kid you not.”

A rush of proprietary jealousy shivers through Sam at that announcement and he bucks forward into his brother’s grasp. _Stop_ , he says, or maybe he just thinks it, too far gone to make his mouth work anymore.

“Bet you’d be sweet,” Dean says. “Probably taste like honey or coconut or some girly shit like that.”

 _Almonds_ , Sam thinks for no reason at all, but he can suddenly taste them on his tongue.

Dean’s hand stills abruptly, only his thumb continuing to stroke in electrifying circles. “Hey,” he says, cocking his head. “You think you’d taste like me? Think it’s a family thing, _little brother_?”

It’s a deliberate, harsh dig that’s meant to wound and suddenly Sam can’t take anymore. If Dean wants this so much, then he can fucking have it.

“Shut up!” he snarls, shoving his brother back.

Dean lets himself tip over and sprawls on his elbows with his legs splayed wide. It’s both offer and challenge, like this is some kind of competition, or a game of chicken. The door is only a foot to Sam’s left: the way to escape is clear. Running would be the smart thing to do here. The safe thing.

But this has already gone too far; Sam is too horny and too angry and too fucking sick with how much he wants what Dean is throwing at him. Instead of breaking for the door, he steps forward and hauls Dean to his feet by one arm. Dean continues to offer no resistance, letting Sam walk him backwards until his back bumps against one of the posts on the bed. He lets out a grunt at the impact, a sound that’s more surprised than pained, and Sam doesn’t give him a chance to recover. Dipping his head, he licks across the fascinating splash of freckles above Dean’s left nipple.

Dean tastes like summer. He tastes like sunshine and the open road and the dry pulse of desert heat. And, distantly, there’s that faint aftertaste of almond.

Sam presses his mouth more firmly over that spot, sucks his own bruise into place. Deeper than the rest, more vivid: a mark of possession that doesn’t even come close to erasing all of the other touches on his brother’s skin. He slides lower, catching Dean’s nipple between his lips and working it into a hard, tight nub.

“Yeah, come on, Sammy,” Dean pants. “This is what you’re paying for, isn’t it?”

Anger tightens Sam’s gut at the goad, and he snaps painfully straight, taller than Dean and using it for the first time in his life. Dean looks up at him through those ridiculous eyelashes, face flushed and lips twisted sardonically.

Scornful.

Beautiful.

“Fuck you, Dean,” Sam growls, and then forces his brother back down onto his knees. Without pausing to think about it, his hands go to his own pants. He digs his fingers underneath his briefs and shoves everything down around his ankles.

Dean doesn’t wait for an order, moving in on his own and catching Sam’s cock in his mouth. There’s no finesse this time, just Dean’s mouth sloppy and greedy on his dick as Sam twists his fingers through his brother’s hair. Dean’s tongue is frantic against the underside of his cock: awkward against the first few rough thrusts. He’s fighting Sam’s grip, but not to pull away. No, Dean is pressing _forward_ : trying to get closer, to take Sam deeper.

Sam’s done letting Dean control this, though. Tightening his grip, he holds his brother’s head in place and pushes forward. Despite Dean’s taunting words before, he’s surprised when he feels Dean’s lips flush against his body: startled to find his entire cock wedged into Dean’s mouth and down the tight channel of his throat. He’s never felt such intense pleasure before—Dean was right, no one he’s been with has been able to swallow that much—and he lets out a low groan, biting his lip deeply enough to draw blood in an attempt to stave off his looming orgasm.

When he’s pulled back from the brink enough, he tilts Dean’s head back slightly with his hands and looks down. Dean’s face is detached as he swallows and hums around Sam’s cock, and his eyes are closed.

Pieces of Sam are splintering off to the right and left and Dean looks like he’s _bored_.

With a renewed surge of anger, Sam starts thrusting in earnest, putting all of his strength behind it as though he can force his soul inside of his brother if he gets deep enough. He’s desperate to make Dean look at him, to make him acknowledge what’s happening, to crack through the shell of indifference and get to his brother underneath. He’s panting, sweat dripping down his neck while Dean’s name and ‘look at me’ and ‘fuck you’ fall from his mouth in harsh grunts.

Dean might be sleeping for all the reaction Sam gets, but he can’t hold off any longer. He shoves in one final time, making Dean take everything, and holds his brother in place as he comes. He expects Dean to choke now— _wants_ him to: wants some proof that Dean isn’t as practiced at this as he seems to be—but Dean’s throat works around him easily as he swallows. His hands rest lightly on the back of his thighs. The muscles in his body are languid. Relaxed.

When it’s over, Sam pulls out too quickly and Dean coughs a little: the only sign of discomfort he’s shown. The sound is unexpected, and Sam starts. His feet catch in his pants and he crashes down onto the floor across from his brother. He knows how ridiculous he must look: face slack with the last aftershocks of his orgasm and cock jutting out flushed and half-hard and shiny with Dean’s spit.

Dean, of course, is as beautiful as ever as he brings one hand up to wipe at the drool on his chin. Most of the bruises on his chest have faded to a faint discoloration, but Sam can still see the mark of his claim pressed over the freckles on Dean’s right breast. Dean’s mouth looks swollen and painful: his lips fuller and redder than usual. Sinful. As though aware of the scrutiny, he finally opens his eyes and looks at Sam.

Looks at him with something like victory.

As he meets that cool gaze, the reality of what Sam just did slams into him hard enough that he twitches. He feels gut-shot and nauseous with guilt.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” he blurts, and starts fighting to pull his pants up, trying to cover himself.

Dean watches him pitilessly. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse: fucked out by Sam’s thrusts.

“Now that you got what you came for, get out. And fucking stay out.”


	21. A Final Breath Before the Storm

Sam is still in shock when he lets himself into the suite at the Bellagio. He hasn’t spoken since Dean told him to get out. Put himself back together in silence: gathered his jacket from the arm of the couch without a word.

When he put his hand on the doorknob to let himself out, and something other than _ohGodohGodohGod_ finally popped into his head, he turned and hurried back into the bedroom with apologizes burning in his mouth. Dean had already shut himself in the bathroom, though; Sam could hear the shower running through the door. He waited for his brother for over an hour, but Dean didn’t emerge, and the shower never turned off.

As he walks past the fountain in the entrance hall of the suite, Sam wonders morbidly whether Dean is still trying to wash his touch from his skin.

He rounds the corner, heading for his room, and then freezes as he catches sight of Bela and Bobby through the open conference room door. They’re sitting side by side at the table looking at Bela’s laptop. Bobby’s drinking a beer and Bela has some kind of hard, clear alcohol at her right elbow.

Sam feels naked: knows that his sin is written across his face for anyone to see. Bobby’s gonna take one look at him and _know_. Thoughts of flight flitter through his head, but there isn’t anywhere for him to run: no hole deep enough or foul enough to hide from what he did.

That doesn’t mean he’s up to facing anyone tonight, of course, so he tries to creep past the open door. Once he’s out of sight, he can sprint the few feet to his room and lock himself inside. He’s craving a shower of his own, actually: needs to rid himself of the clinging residue of his brother’s victorious gaze.

Bela has the instincts of a thief, though, and just as he’s about to inch safely out of sight, she lifts her head and spots him.

“Sam,” she greets with her best warm, disingenuous smile firmly in place.

Bobby looks up as well at the sound of Sam’s name, and Sam can’t quite hide his flinch when the man’s eyes fall on him.

“Hey, Sam,” Bobby says. His smile, although weak, is completely genuine. “How’s Dean?”

 _Yes, Sam, how_ is _Dean?_ a cold voice in Sam’s mind taunts. _Just as good as you always imagined, isn’t he?_

No, he isn’t. He’s _better._

Oh God, no matter how disgusted Sam is by himself right now, there’s a part of him—that dark, powerful part—that wants to do it again. That’s humming with excitement at the thought of going back to Vincent’s guest suite tomorrow night and doing _more_.

Sam’s stomach heaves and for a moment he’s certain that he’s going to throw up. The conference room swims in his vision _(now that you got what you came for)_ and then stabilizes again. Bobby is still waiting for an answer, and although he doesn’t look suspicious yet, he’s going to _get_ suspicious in a few moments if Sam doesn’t do something.

Clearing his throat, Sam says, “He’s okay.” Miraculously, his voice is steady.

“He’s healing?” Bobby prods.

“Yeah, he’s, uh, almost fully recovered.”

“Good,” Bela says with a satisfied undercurrent to her voice. “Then he’ll be ready for tomorrow night.”

Sam blinks. “Tomorrow night?” He has no idea what Bela is talking about. His mind is too filled with the memory of Dean’s mouth: with the way that Dean’s skin tasted and the needy sounds he made when he suckled at Sam’s cock.

 _I should’ve kissed him,_ Sam thinks dully. He fucked his relationship with his brother up beyond repair tonight: might as well have indulged himself when he had the chance. Of course, thinking like that leads to thoughts of tossing Dean down onto those black silk sheets and claiming his territory, which isn’t the kind of thing he should be capable of considering right now.

Distracted and worried, he runs a hand through his hair. How much of the darkness inside of him is from the demon-driven power, and how much is Sam? The answer doesn’t matter much—it's too late to stop using the power now even if he could afford to—but at the same time, it’s one of the most important questions Sam has ever asked himself.

God, it’s terrifying that he has no way of knowing whether he hurt Dean because he’s contaminated or because he’s just that sick. He so desperately wants it not to have been his fault, but he knows, deep down, that it is. Even if the power made it easier to succumb, the original impulse—all that burning, bottomless hunger—is all Sam.

 _My fault,_ he thinks. _Oh fuck, how could I do that to him?_

Someone touches his arm and Sam jolts back to himself. He takes a stumbling lurch backward before Bobby’s face registers and then makes himself stop. Guilt tastes like acid and bile: the edges of the nausea that is threatening to overtake him.

Brow furrowed and eyes dark, Bobby turns his hand palm out. Over Bobby’s shoulder, Sam can see Bela standing by the table with a tight frown on her face as she watches the two of them.

Oh fuck, they know. Sam spaced out and now they know what he did—what he _is_.

“You okay, Sam?” Bobby asks. “You zoned out on us for a minute there.”

Relief mingles with his guilt and only makes him feel worse. His fingers twitch with the urge to rub at his skin. Dirty. Twisted. Contaminated.

“I’m … fine. I’m just tired. Haven’t been sleeping well.” Bobby’s going to see right through that half-truth to the lie it is, Sam’s sure of it.

But instead the concern on Bobby’s face eases—and it is concern, rather than the condemnation Sam’s fevered mind took it for at first—and he nods sympathetically. “It’s almost over now,” he says. “I don’t know that you heard me before, but Gordon called and they’re ready. We can get him out tomorrow night.”

Tomorrow night. It’s sooner than Sam was letting himself hope for and still one night and a blowjob too late.

“That’s great,” he rasps. “Do we need—” He stops, smoothes his hand awkwardly down the front of his jacket, and then continues, “We need to go over everything again. Make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

He tries to edge past Bobby into the conference room and Bobby moves with him, blocking his path. “You’re wiped, Sam,” he says. “How about you turn in? Bela and I are running over the plan now, and we’re gonna _keep_ running over it until I’m satisfied it’s as airtight as it can get.”

“I should—”

“Bed. Now.”

Swallowing, Sam ducks his head and nods. He doesn’t know why he was arguing in the first place. Maybe because, as terrified as he is of Bobby in particular finding out what he did to Dean, he’s more afraid of being alone with himself.

“It’s gonna be fine, son,” Bobby says, clapping one hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We’re gonna get him back.”

No longer trusting his voice, Sam nods and then pulls free from Bobby’s grip. His eyes burn as he slinks down the hall to his room.

If Bobby knew, he wouldn’t have touched Sam like that. If he knew, he’d have taken out his gun and put a hole in Sam’s chest.

As he pushes the door to his room closed behind him, shutting the world out and his guilty thoughts in, Sam’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve anything else.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam feels himself sliding through the dark place inside of him as he drifts off, but he’s too torn up inside to stop it. One second he’s floating down, his thoughts wrapped up in Dean while a hum of power cocoons him, and the next he’s standing in the guest suite’s bedroom again.

Dean is a huddled shape underneath the covers, rolled onto his side with his knees pulled up to his chest. It isn’t anything like his normal sleeping position—sprawled wide and cat-like, taking up as much space as he can—and Sam’s chest tightens to see him curled in on himself like that. Like he’s trying to avoid notice, or shield himself from a blow.

The worn t-shirt Dean’s wearing pulls across his shoulders with every breath. His hair is still damp on his pillow. Sam looks at his brother’s face, so lax and vulnerable in sleep, and wants to stride over to the bed and pull his brother into his arms. Wants to stroke Dean’s hair and whisper apologies that will never come close to making up for what he did.

But he knows that this isn’t a dream—knows where he is—and touching his brother at all when he’s inside of Dean’s _(soul)_ mind would be even more of a violation. Besides, he has other things to worry about here.

Sam turns, scanning the room, and isn’t surprised to find the wolf standing only a few feet behind him. Geri is wearing Dean’s shape again and watching him with a wary, but otherwise unreadable, expression.

Sam raises his hands quickly, palms out to show that he means no harm. The scratches that Geri gave him last time they met have only just stopped aching when he touches them, and no matter how much he deserves it, he’s in no hurry to get another set.

“I’m not a demon,” he blurts.

Geri cocks its head. “Know that,” it says. “Didn’t taste like deathlessdark. Fled, didn’t fight.”

Sam starts to lower his hands and then realizes that he’s probably still on the wolf’s shit list for what he did to Dean.

“I’m sorry,” he says, offering the apology to something that isn’t his brother but has his face. “I didn’t mean to, I swear to God I didn’t.”

Blinking, Geri cocks its head to the other side. “Not your fault,” it says. “Infected. Sick. Bad blood.”

For a moment, Sam thinks that the wolf is telling him that his desire for Dean stems from the same place as his powers. That doesn’t make any sense, though. Sam wanted Dean long before he had any visions, and as much as he’s like to blame his desire on the darkness inside of him, he knows he can’t. It’s a sickness all right, but it’s all Sam.

Besides, Geri doesn’t seem upset. A little confused, maybe, but not hostile and snarling the way it should be over what he did to his brother. As Sam’s fear eases, he remembers talking to Geri about the Gleipnir: remembers the wolf telling him that it isn’t always aware of what happens to Dean.

 _It doesn’t know,_ he realizes. _It didn’t see what I did._

The rush of shamed relief at that understanding only drowns out Sam’s rational mind for a second. Frowning, he turns over what the wolf just told him and then says, “You’re talking about the power.”

Geri nods. “Yes. From deathlessdark. Infected.”

“How?” Sam asks.

Despite his unabated guilt over Dean, he can’t help feeling a little excited. He thought he gave up any chance of ever knowing what was happening to him when he shot the yellow-eyed demon. Now, after all this time, he’s finally on the verge of understanding.

“Bad blood,” the wolf repeats. “Makes you sick. Like eating maggot meat.”

Sam’s brain refuses to put that together for a few seconds, and when it finally does, a wave of trembling, icy weakness spreads through him and drops him to his knees.

There's a part of him—the same part that has embraced the power—that isn't terribly surprised. The rest of him wants to be sick, no matter how useless that would be. There’s nothing for him to throw up here, after all, and there wouldn’t be anything even if he were in his body. It’s years too late to get rid of the taint that way. Sam doesn’t know how _many_ years late: won’t ever know for sure when the yellow-eyed bastard poured the blood—probably its own—down his throat.

Based on when his powers began to appear, he’d guess that it was sometime during his last summer at Stanford. On the other hand, logic tells him that it’s more likely his contamination took place when he was six months old. If the powers that the demon’s blood produced are the reason that the yellow-eyed demon wanted him, then the potential must have already been there when it killed his mother in the nursery.

When the numb cocoon of shock finally eases, Sam pushes himself up into a crouch and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He looks up and finds Geri watching him with the unconcerned interest of a child. If that were Dean, he’d be over here with one hand low on Sam’s back, soothing him through this.

Well, probably not anymore.

Wary of his shaking legs, Sam gets back to his feet. “Is there—” His voice cracks and he has to clear his throat before trying again. “Is there a way to get it out?”

But Geri is distracted, head tilted up into the air like a dog on point. Sniffing audibly, it edges forward. Sam lets it come closer, awkward with how much it looks like his brother: with its casual nudity. He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the far wall as the wolf presses its nose to the side of his neck and draws in a slow, deep breath.

“Geri?” he says, trying to ignore his body’s treacherous reaction to having something that looks and feels exactly like his brother pressed up against him. Dean’s lips brush his collarbone as Geri lifts its head.

Geri’s eyes skim down his body, narrowed and intent, and before Sam realizes what’s happening, the wolf has dropped to its knees in front of him. Sam’s head swims with images of Dean kneeling in front of him: of Dean’s lips stretched around his cock. He feels the phantom grasp of his brother’s hand on his hip. The wet, tight heat of Dean’s throat.

Geri nuzzles at Sam’s stomach with the same, deliberate breaths it gave his neck, sniffing him. Its hands come up and rest on Sam’s hips, echoes of Dean, and Sam realizes that he’s trembling. And hard.

 _Should move_ , he thinks, because there’s fucked up and then there’s Fucked Up and he’s pretty sure that this falls in the latter category. He doesn’t, though: stomach twitching as his brother’s nose and mouth rub against it through his shirt. Can’t seem to remember how to make his legs work.

When Geri lifts its head to look at him, its pupils are tiny little points that are almost lost in a field of gold. “Smell good,” it says. “Smell like—”

“Sammy, yeah, I know,” Sam blurts. His paralysis has finally broken at the sound of the wolf’s voice, and he takes the step back that he should have taken earlier tonight.

Geri shakes its head, breaking out into a grin as it rises to its feet in a smooth motion. “No,” it corrects. “Smell like _mate_.”

Sam has time to think, _oh, fu—_ and then he has an armful of wolf. Gripping his hips with insistent hands, Geri licks eagerly along Sam’s collarbone. Sam wraps his own hands around the wolf’s biceps, trying to push it off of him, and might as well be pushing at a brick wall.

“Stop,” he tries. “Geri, I’m not—we aren’t—”

“Mate,” the wolf repeats happily, and then bites down into the sensitive join between Sam’s shoulder and neck.

“Ow!” Sam shouts, jerking his head to one side. He isn’t sure that Geri didn’t draw blood with that bite.

Geri gives that aching spot another lick and then snorts laughter when Sam squirms and lets out a short hiss. It sounds so much like Dean in a teasing mood that Sam’s chest clenches.

“Get off me!” he snaps more sharply than he meant to, getting his hands between them and shoving at the wolf’s chest. “I’m his _brother_!”

As if that stopped Sam a few hours ago. As if he’d hesitate to shove Dean down on his back for one second if Dean wanted him back.

“Smell us on you,” the wolf insists, slipping one of its hands around to rest on Sam’s stomach. “Smell us here. Marked you.”

Okay, now Sam is _completely_ lost because there’s no way that the wolf can call giving Sam a blowjob ‘marking’ him. The dream—Dean’s release spilling out and smearing them both—flickers at the back of his mind and is ruthlessly shoved away. That wasn’t real.

 _Just like this isn’t real?_ a snide voice asks.

Sam is too busy keeping the wolf’s hands out of his pants to answer. It’s like trying to snatch a toy away from a four year old. The wolf keeps making this snuffing, laughing noise and wriggling its wrist free from his grip. When Sam finally manages to restrain Geri’s right hand with both of his own, the damned wolf immediately starts groping with its left instead.

After his indiscretion earlier tonight, Sam knows intimately just how perfectly Geri’s hand mimics his brother's, and his breath catches as it finally gets a hold on him. Geri’s eyes gleam in triumph, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do now that it has him. Thank God for small favors: if it starts actually doing something Sam’s gonna lose what little sanity is left to him at this point.

Releasing the wolf’s right hand, Sam wraps both of his hands around its left wrist. The wolf ignores him, glancing toward Dean’s slumbering body and narrowing its eyes in concentration. Sam’s pretty sure that he knows what it’s after, and he scrambles to pull its hand free before it siphons the knowledge from his brother’s mind.

He isn’t quite quick enough. As Sam starts to pull up, Geri’s face lights with a mischievous smile and drags its thumb against the head of his cock. Sam’s hand goes lax around its wrist and Geri makes a happy little noise and adjusts its grip. With Sam hanging on loosely, it starts to stroke him with exactly the same pressure and speed Dean used earlier tonight.

Instead of hurling hateful words, though, it licks the corner of his jaw and growls, “Mine.”

Sam shudders, his eyes slipping shut.

“Mine,” Geri repeats triumphantly, and Sam could almost believe it’s Dean’s voice. Dean’s hand on him. Dean _wanting_ him.

Then again, this is how he got into trouble with his brother in the first place. If he hadn’t indulged himself in his dreams, then even with the darkness corroding his self-restraint, he never would have been weak enough to fold in real life.

“That’s enough, damn it!” he grunts, and shoves the wolf directly in the center of its chest. His mind pulses with the shove, power flexing outward, and Geri is finally driven back.

Dropping into a half-crouch, it stares at him with muscles tensed and wide, startled eyes. Oh, fantastic. Now instead of trying to get into his pants, it’s going to try to kill him again. Sam readies himself to slide back into his own mind as soon as it leaps, but it doesn’t move. In fact, after a moment its face crumples and it whines at the back of its throat. Sam stands there awkwardly, feeling like he just kicked a puppy.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. The apology feels clumsy on his tongue. “But you can’t—you can’t _do_ that, okay? Do you understand?”

It sniffles and then edges closer, shoulders hunched and head held at a wary angle. “Understand,” it says. “SammyMate sick. Have to fix you.”

When Sam doesn’t strike out, Geri straightens and closes the rest of the distance between them. Sam tenses, ready to push it away if it tries anything, but it doesn’t do anything more than lean against his body and butt its head against his shoulder affectionately. Which is weird, but not exactly inappropriate.

“Can you?” he asks. “Fix me, I mean?”

“Fix you,” Geri says. “You save DeanMeMine, then we fix you.” It pauses and then, with an impish smile playing around its mouth, it adds, “ _Then_ we mate you.”

“No,” Sam tries again, shifting his body away from the erection poking into his hip. “I’m not—we aren’t doing that. Not ever. What you smell, it’s a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.” His throat constricts painfully, and his next words—the confession he can’t hold back any longer—comes out choked. “I hurt him.”

That gets through to Geri enough for the wolf to draw back a step. It wrinkles its forehead in confusion. “You hurt DeanMeMine?”

“Yeah, I—he doesn’t want me,” Sam tells it. The wolf just looks at him, uncomprehending, and he shifts uneasily. This would be so much easier to explain if he was talking to something that had human emotions.

“He was being—he was trying to make me leave and he pushed too hard. He didn’t know that I—that I really wanted him. Like that. And then when he—he was h-hurting and I sh-shouldn’t have—”

Sam is crying suddenly. Weak, helpless tears because it’s true: he as good as raped his brother and he liked it. God help him, he fucking loved it.

He’s no better than Vincent.

Sam doesn’t register the soft brush against his cheeks at first. He’s crying too hard: sunk too deeply into his misery and self-hatred. Then hands settle firmly onto his shoulders and there’s no missing that.

“W-what are y-you—” he gets out.

“Shh,” Geri hushes him, and licks at his tears again. “Love you. Mate. Never hurt us.”

It isn’t true and Sam knows it: he hurts Dean all the time—hurt him tonight, and badly, and just because the wolf doesn’t understand that doesn’t make it untrue. He doesn’t deserve the comfort he’s being offered, but he’s too weak to refuse it. So instead of pushing Geri away again or flinging himself free from his brother’s subconscious, he yanks the wolf into a crushing hug. Ducking his face against its shoulder, he sobs harder. After a moment, Geri’s arms come up awkwardly to hold him.

“SammyMate,” it says, and the licks turn into clumsy kisses against the side of his bent neck. It’s obvious that it’s new to this form of affection, but the artlessness of the kisses pierce Sam more deeply than any of the more skilled ones he’s received over the years.

“SammyMate and DeanMeMine hunt together soon,” it soothes. “Two-as-one. Very good.”

Oh God, he wishes that were true. He wishes that things could be like that: him and Dean on the road, him and Dean together. Dean loving him back.

But he’s never going to have that, not fucking _ever_ , and the knowledge is sour in his mouth. Geri says that Dean loves him, and he doesn’t doubt that. But it can’t possibly understand the difference between the brotherly love that Dean feels and the soul-crushing, heated longing that possesses Sam.

No, this—letting the alien intelligence invading his brother’s soul hold and comfort him—is this closest that Sam will ever come to being whole. And even this is a cheat: a lie based on a simple misunderstanding.

Sam has no doubt that Geri will understand in time. The connection between the wolf and his brother is frayed and drugged but not broken, and sooner or later it will realize how deeply Sam betrayed Dean’s trust. For now, though, he lets himself sink deeper into its embrace. He lets its voice—Dean’s voice—whisper loving reassurances while he weeps for everything he lost in a moment of angry passion.

When Sam finally wakes in the morning, his eyes are sore and dry from crying. His head is fuzzed with sorrow and guilt is a heavy weight on his chest: a weak roil in his stomach. As broken as he feels, he doesn’t think that he could possibly shed another tear.

But when he hauls himself into the bathroom and looks in the mirror—when he sees the bruise on his neck from the wolf’s love bite: the promise of what he needs so desperately and is never going to have—he discovers that he has a few more in him after all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Today of all days, it’s too dangerous to meet Gordon and his team in person. Sam doesn’t want to risk tipping Vincent off at the last minute, and Bela and Bobby both agree with him. They set up an online conference instead, with the three of them crowded around Bela’s laptop on one end, Gordon on the other, and Ash providing the closed channel between them.

Ash looks half-awake when the video conference screen opens: eyes bleary and hair mashed into a helmet on one side of his head. He’s nursing a beer, though, so Sam assumes—hopes—that he’s been up longer than he appears to have been.

“Sam,” Ash greets him.

“Hey, Ash,” Sam returns easily.

He’s feeling fairly calm right now, having exerted control over his churning emotions by dipping into the dark power inside of him. As long as he keeps at least part of his attention there, he doesn’t feel nearly so bad about what he did to Dean, and he isn’t worried about tonight at all. How could he be worried with so much strength rushing through him?

Sam is fucking invincible, and he’s going to get Dean back, and everything is going to be fine.

“I’ve got Gordon Walker cued up,” Ash says. “You ready for him?”

“In a second,” Sam answers. “First I need to ask you for another favor.” It’s a formality. He already knows that the challenge of what he’s proposing alone will reel the hacker in. Otherwise, despite the danger of someone unfriendly getting wind of what they were doing _(Ash can’t keep his mouth shut for shit)_ , Sam would have gone to work on him sooner.

“Shoot.”

“Dean’s alive,” Sam says, laying it out there.

Ash blinks and then nods. “Congrats, man,” he says, taking a swig of his beer.

Bobby makes a soft huff of laughter next to Sam and shakes his head. Meeting Sam’s eyes, he mutters out of the corner of his mouth, “Kid gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘half-baked’, doesn’t he?”

Sam, who’s actually somewhat relieved by Ash’s lack of reaction, clears his throat and says, “Um. Thanks. Anyway, he’s being held by Vincent Camargo and we’re getting him out tonight. We were hoping you could do a few things for us.”

“Name ‘em,” Ash agrees easily.

Between the three of them, it only takes a few minutes to outline the plan for Ash. Just as Sam suspected, Ash brightens almost immediately.

“Rocking,” he says. “I’ve got a rig set up in my room that should be able to send a signal that far. What channel are we using?”

“You’ll have to ask Gordon,” Sam answers. “His people are setting us up with the ear pieces and the mikes. You’re sure you’ll be able to handle everything from there?”

Ash looks a little insulted as he answers, “I could do this in my sleep, man.” Sam’s about to apologize—the last thing he needs is to be on Ash’s bad side right now—but Ash is already scratching his ear and muttering, “I’m gonna need some reinforcements, though.” Glancing off to his right, he calls, “Jo, bring me some nachos, woman!”

“Do I look like your fetch and carry girl?” Jo’s voice shouts back.

“I’m busy rescuing Dean Winchester. Don’t have time to get my own grub.”

“ _What?_ ”

Sam winces—this is _exactly_ why they haven’t let Ash in on the whole story until now—but it’s already too late. Ash is shoved aside and Jo’s face fills the box. Her skin is flushed and her eyes are overly bright. She has her hair in pigtails, and looks all of sixteen.

“Sam? Is he—Ash said Dean was—”

“He’s alive,” Sam admits, and then interrupts Jo’s whoop of joy by adding, “Jo! Jo, you can’t tell anyone. It isn’t safe yet.”

Jo sobers immediately and Sam catches a glint of Ellen in the way her jaw firms. “He’s in trouble?”

“We’re going in after him tonight,” Sam tells her, “But if anyone finds out about it we could all wind up dead. So I mean it, you can’t tell _anyone_ —not even your mother. That goes for you too, Ash,” he adds as the hacker shifts back into the frame behind Jo.

Ash looks confused. “Why would I tell my mother?”

Elbowing Ash in the gut, Jo gives Sam a nod. “He won’t say anything. I’ll make sure of it.” She hesitates, biting down on her lower lip, and then asks, “You’ll come see us? After?”

The dark, powerful place in Sam’s mind pulses. _He isn’t yours,_ he thinks. _He’s_ never _going to be yours._

As the overhead lights flicker and the computer screen fuzzes briefly, Sam realizes that he’s slipping further into the darkness. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth, like sulfur, he can almost see the power flickering around his fingertips where his right hand is resting on the table. At this rate, he isn’t going to safely be able to use it as a shield against his own emotions much longer.

Bela frowns as she taps the edge of the computer screen with one nail, oblivious to Sam’s part in her laptop’s hiccup. Bobby knows about Sam’s powers, though, and he isn’t stupid. Sam senses the man’s stare as a physical weight on his skin.

Closing his eyes, Sam begins to draw away from the exhilarating thrum of power. It clings to him like tar, slicking his thoughts and fighting to suck him deeper. He moves slowly by necessity, trying to scrape as much of the clinging darkness from his mind as he can while withdrawing. Finally, when there’s nothing more than a thin, trembling wall between him and the fear and the guilt and the growing, bleak despair, Sam opens his eyes again.

It feels as though he’s been struggling with himself for hours, but from the expectant, cheerful look on Jo’s face it can’t have taken any more than a few seconds. Forcing a smile onto his face, he says, “We’re heading to Bobby’s for a few weeks first. We’ll see what happens then.”

“You’ll come.” Jo’s statement has the assurance of innocence. Her voice and face are filled with the same, blind naiveté that lets her think she has any kind of chance with Dean.

Something dark and snapping and green-eyed stirs in Sam’s stomach and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from snarling, ‘We’re never coming. Dean’s mine, he’s fucking _mine_ , and I don’t share.’

The power pulses, reaching for him, and he feels dizzy.

“If you don’t,” Jo continues obliviously, “I’ll sic Mom on you.” Grabbing Ash in a headlock, she presses a quick kiss to his temple. “Fully loaded nachos coming right up,” she announces, and then bounds out of view.

“Sam, my man,” Ash says as he stares after her. “We should rescue your brother more often.”

Bobby’s hand dropping down on top of Sam’s in a warning, but it’s a distant sensation. Feeling as though he’s moving someone else’s body, Sam twists his hand and grasps at the offering. Tightens his grip until he hears the echoing, remote sound of Bobby’s pained grasp.

Much louder and more immediate is the oily laughter that spills forth from the dark place inside of him. It’s Sam’s voice, he recognizes that, but so much colder. Crueler. Power floods him, and he can’t figure out if the solid ground he was standing on crumbled from under his feet and sent him tumbling back into the dark, or if the demonic taint is spreading: rising inside his mind like cold, black water. Sam is drowning, and the only thing tethering him to his humanity right now is his grip on Bobby’s hand.

“Sam? Are you all right?” Bela’s voice. Bela to his left and if she touches him when he’s like this, then Sam is going to kill her.

“Fight it, Sam,” Bobby urges. His voice is tight with pain—of course it is, Sam can feel bones grating beneath his fingers—and urgency.

Sam shakes his head. He can’t. He isn’t strong enough. Fuck, that sulfur taste is stronger than ever now, and undercut with the copper tang of blood. Bobby’s hand is making noises in Sam’s grip—snap crackle pop—and if Sam hasn’t broken anything yet he’s going to in a moment. But Bobby isn’t trying to pull free: is actually doing his best to clutch back.

“Come on, boy,” he murmurs in Sam’s ear. “You’re stronger than this, damn it. You’re a goddamned Winchester, and you’re going to pull yourself together and get your brother out of that hellhole.”

 _Dean_ , Sam thinks, only it’s more complicated than that. No, what he really thinks isn’t his brother’s name but a series of images:

Dean hauling him to his feet after a demon pounded his face into a puffy, ludicrous mask;

Dean snorting laughter after he put Tabasco sauce into Sam’s coffee when he was in the bathroom;

Dean sitting on the hood of the Impala beside him, strong and silent while night falls around them in a twinkling shroud of starlight;

Dean as a comforting weight at the edge of the bed while Sam shivers and throbs with the flu;

Dean’s competent hands lying wet, cool cloths against Sam’s forehead after one of his head-splitting visions.

Dean in a million more instants from Sam’s life that all add up to a brilliant blur of love, and trust, and everything good that his brother brings out in him.

The cruel, laughing voice inside of Sam hisses and flees in the face of the light shed by those memories, and the power falls away so suddenly that it leaves Sam staggered. He has a moment of achingly pure relief and then his own emotions snap into place. His chest hitches and he breaks down sobbing for what feels like the hundredth time since he shoved his cock down his brother’s throat. Bobby finally draws his hand free from Sam’s and pulls him into an awkward hug.

“Sam?” Ash’s voice is tinny over the computer speakers. “You okay?”

“He’s fine; just give us a minute.” The rumble of Bobby’s voice is both soothing and shattering. Sam doesn’t deserve this, he isn’t fucking worthy, he’s tainted, he corrupts everything around him, he as good as raped his brother—

Somehow, Bobby maneuvers them both up out of the chairs and walks Sam into the living room. Sam clings to the man, desperate and trembling, and is floored by how much he wishes that Bobby were Geri. God, how fucked up is it that he’s longing for the very thing that destroyed his life, Dean’s life, Dad’s?

“I’ve got you, Sam,” Bobby says. “You’re okay, son.”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m not. I can’t do this, Bobby: I hurt him, all I ever do is hurt him—he’s better off with Vincent—”

The punch startles more than hurts him. His words cut off immediately and he stares at Bobby. Rubs one hand against his jaw where there’s a spreading, tingling warmth.

“B-Bobby, what—”

Bobby draws in a short, harsh breath and then growls, “Shut up and listen, boy. Your brother needs you. As far as he’s concerned, you’re the one good thing left in his life—and he told me that himself one night when he was drunk, so don’t bother arguing with me.”

Sam swallows his protest.

“Now, you’ve fucked up your share of things, and whatever you’re doing with that power you’ve got is stupid as hell, but if I ever hear you say something that moronic again, I will personally beat your ass until I kick your brains back into your head where they belong, you hear me?”

Sam feels worse than ever, but the hysteria is gone: driven out by the shame that Bobby’s words provoked. “If you knew what I did, you wouldn’t say that.”

Bobby’s jaw squares and his eyes flit down to the bruise on Sam’s neck. He’s been looking at it on and off all morning, not saying anything or asking any questions. Then again, Bobby’s never needed to use words to get his point across, and as far as he knows there’s only one place Sam could have gotten his neck marked up like that.

What Bela thinks about it is anybody’s guess. As far as Sam can tell, she hasn’t even noticed.

“Maybe so,” Bobby says as he raises his eyes to Sam’s again. “But we deal with that after. Right now, we need to focus on getting him out of there—or did you want to leave him there to whore and murder for the rest of his life?”

“No,” Sam whispers. “But I don’t want to hurt him any more either.”

Sighing, Bobby gives his cap a tug. “I ain’t gonna let you do that, Sam. I give you my word.”

 _You won’t be able to stop me,_ Sam thinks as his power stirs sluggishly. _No one will._

But Bobby’s right: Sam can’t leave Dean with Vincent. Can’t leave him with Bobby, either, because Bobby’s gonna shoot him like a rabid dog at the first sign of danger. And Sam can’t stay with his brother to protect him without hurting Dean himself.

 _Cross that bridge when you come to it,_ he tells himself, and, _One thing at a time._

“Okay,” he mumbles.

“Good.” Bobby nods. “You think you’re ready to go back in there?”

Sam knows that he isn’t anywhere near ready, but he doesn’t have a choice. They don’t have time for him to break down like this.

When they return to the conference room, Bela is already finalizing the plan with Gordon. Any other time, Sam would be pissed that she went forward without him, but he doesn’t have room for any more emotions inside of him. Sitting down next to her, he offers a brief greeting to Gordon.

It isn’t a long conversation. Gordon makes sure that they got the package he sent them, and Bela assures him it was picked up. Bobby wants to make sure that Gordon will wait for the go-ahead before getting into position: no point in mounting a rescue if Dean is too injured after tonight’s fight to be moved. Bela wants to be certain that Ash understands the gravity of the situation, and although Ash is more concerned with the nachos Jo brought him than with convincing her, in the end everyone seems fairly satisfied.

Sam sits there, silent for the most part, and works to force his mind into game mode. It’s difficult without the power’s help, but he can’t afford to lose himself again, and he has the feeling that he’ll be using it more than enough tonight. Eventually, he finds his focus: guilt-tainted but workable. He’s clear-headed enough to contribute to the end of the conversation, and offers Gordon a genuine “Good luck” before the man signs off.

Chewing on a nacho, Ash peers at him from the computer screen and asks, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Just a little tense,” Sam tells him. “I really appreciate this, Ash.”

“No problemo. I always enjoy a little corporate terrorism before bed.”

“Well, thanks anyway.” Because God knows that Sam won’t have a chance to thank Ash later. Even if everything goes according to plan, Sam is done with hunters. Nothing like a little demon blood to burn your bridges for you.

“Okie dokie,” Ash agrees, grinning. “Base command, over and out.”

The communication box closes and Bobby snorts. “Base command my ass,” he grumbles. “That boy better keep his head in the game.”

“He will,” Sam says, and then reaches out to shut the laptop.

The three of them sit in silence for a long moment, and then Bela clears her throat and says, “I’m going to order some lunch.”

Sam doesn’t feel like eating, but he manages to choke down a few bites anyway. After, he and Bobby sit at the bar over a couple of whiskeys while Bela disappears into her room. They talk about things that don’t mean anything—old times mostly, and nothing too unsettling. Both of them being very careful. Both of them not mentioning Sam’s breakdown, although Sam knows that Bobby is thinking about it from the way the man keeps watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Finally, Bela sticks her head out from her room and calls, “If you don’t want to be late, Sam, then you’d better start getting dressed.”

Sam taps his fingers on the smooth wood. Time, then. After months of mourning, and then of searching, it’s finally time. His skin itches, pulse too fast. Slight sheen of sweat on the back of his neck.

Nerves.

“Wish I was going in with you,” Bobby says, staring down at his glass.

Pushing his own drink away, Sam reminds him, “You can’t. Vincent knows what you look like.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Bobby gives a sour grunt and looks over at him. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

Sam could spend a few minutes reassuring him, but they’ve been over this enough. And he’s sick of Bobby sneaking glances at the mark on his neck. “Guess not,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Sam.” Bobby’s hand settles on Sam’s arm, halting him. “You be careful in there, okay?”

“No worries. Bela’ll be watching my back.”

Bobby barks a surprised laugh at the joke and then shakes his head ruefully. “You Winchesters. Should’ve kicked John out on his ass first time I saw him. Nothing but trouble, the lot of you.”

 _One way or another, you’re almost washed of us,_ Sam thinks. But his smile doesn’t waver as he claps one hand on Bobby’s shoulder companionably. He thinks the mask he’s wearing is as impenetrable as any of Dean’s, but Bobby catches his hand before he can lift it and his expression sobers.

“Santa Clara. You’ll be there?” His voice is barely audible, kept low because Bela thinks they’re meeting in Dolan Springs.

“We’ll be there,” Sam agrees.

He has plans of his own, of course, and they don’t involve either city. Don’t involve much of anything beyond another rundown motel room somewhere well away from Bela’ plans and Bobby’s promises. Somewhere he can find out if there’s anything left to salvage of his relationship with his brother. Where Dean can finally begin to heal.

Bobby holds his gaze for a long moment, but in the end he nods and lets Sam take his hand back. “We’ll fix this, Sam.”

‘This’ being the wolf inside of Dean. The dark power inside of Sam.

“Okay,” Sam says, but what he means is ‘goodbye’.


	22. The Endless War

Sam is almost certain that they’re going to be screwed before they even get inside the Arena: too used to things going wrong to really consider the possibility of something going right for once. But there’s no wail of alarms when Bela sways past the metal detectors on Sam’s arm, and Vincent’s security team remain in their semi-relaxed postures. Sam isn’t sure if that’s Ash doing his job and mucking with the security systems or if it’s the cigarette case where Bela stashed their two-way radios before leaving the room. Either way, they made it past their first hurdle, and he relaxes minutely.

Maybe this is going to work after all.

“See?” Bela purrs into his ear on the elevator ride down. “No problem.”

Sam pulls her closer with one arm as he nuzzles her hair, using his body to hide the fact that she’s slipping one of the radios—earpiece and microphone both—into his jacket pocket. They get an annoyed look from one of the two elderly women sharing the car with them. It’s ludicrous that anyone coming here can be so prudish about such a mild display of affection, but there’s no mistaking the disapproval in the woman’s pursed lips.

Sam offers her his best ‘eat-shit-and-die’ smile—the one he learned from Dean—before pulling Bela’s head back by the hair and shoving his tongue into her mouth. She lets him, of course—doesn’t have much choice in the matter—but she uses the opportunity to bite his lip and digs her nails into the skin at the back of his neck. Kissing a rattlesnake would probably be more fun, but Sam has never swerved away from a challenge so he just twists his hand in her hair and bites back.

He keeps his eyes on the elderly woman while he fights for control of the kiss and is filled with a gratifying rush of satisfaction when she flushes and looks away, diamond earrings swinging. A moment later, the elevator door opens and the two women file out. Sam finally lets Bela break the kiss.

The color is high in her cheeks and her eyes spark anger. Her hands twitch with the urge to slap him. Or maybe she’s wishing that they felt secure enough in Ash’s abilities to bring in a couple of guns.

“What the hell was that?” she hisses.

Sam shrugs. “I didn’t like the way that woman was looking at us. Thought I’d give her a show.”

Bela stares at him for another moment, disbelief warring with something flinching— _fearshamedisgust_ —and then breaks past him. Her movements are abnormally skittish and as Sam follows more slowly he realizes that he didn’t kiss her because he wanted to piss off the nameless, hypocritical woman. No, he kissed Bela because he knew it would get to her. He did it out of cruelty.

Breaking out into a cold sweat, he checks in his head and sure enough, there’s a trickle of power leaking into his thoughts. He’s tapping it unconsciously now, like a kid sitting on the edge of a dock and flicking the water with his toes.

Damn it. God damn it all to hell.

There’s that cold laugh again, him and yet not him, and Sam rubs one hand across his mouth. As he and Bela approach their box, he shoves the power back and does his best to seal it away. Thinks of the wolf’s offer to save him and wonders if there’s a point of no return. He’s pretty sure that there is, and encouraging his powers these last few days has him approaching it at a sprint.

 _Just a few more hours and I never have to touch it again,_ he reminds himself as he sits down next to Bela.

Bela doesn’t acknowledge him, staring down at the empty cage with her back stiff and her face set in a rigid smile that Sam doesn’t buy for a minute. Even though he knows that she helped put Dean here—that she’s almost undoubtedly planning something and has the morals of a backstabbing thief—he almost feels sorry for her. Whatever else she is, Bela’s still a person, and she’s been sleeping with Vincent in order to help rescue Dean.

As much as she pretends to view her body as just another weapon, Sam suspects that she’s not as hardened on that front as she’d like to be.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “I’m on edge. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Bela lifts one hand in a wave to someone across the arena and mutters back, “Try it again and I will castrate you.”

“Fair enough,” Sam agrees.

It isn’t long before the show starts, and Sam finds himself slipping back into game-mode. It’s actually easier to ignore his nerves and the constant underplay of guilt now that he has to devote some of his attention to keeping the power locked down; playing warden in his own mind has him too busy to worry about much of anything. Sam watches blood spill and flesh bruise and is mostly calm, with only the faintest thrum of nerves as he waits for Dean’s fight: as he waits to see if Dean will be left in any condition to be moved after what is hopefully his last time in the cage.

When Vincent strolls onto the mat—beard neatly trimmed and wearing a cotton candy blue suit—Sam sits up a little straighter. Vincent gives a wave at the applause his entrance brings, flashing his smile around in a wide circle. He waits for the clapping to die down and then says, “I bid you all welcome, and I trust that you’re enjoying yourselves.”

Although there’s no questioning lilt to his words, a smattering of applause answers him in the affirmative. Vincent’s smile stretches even wider, shark-like, and he nods.

“Wonderful. On to the main event, then, shall we?”

There’s a soft, mechanical click and the harsh white floodlights soften to amber. The tint clashes with Vincent’s suit, turning it an ugly brown color. Then again, Sam’s pretty sure that Vincent isn’t who the lighting change was designed to compliment.

“From the farthest reaches of time and myth,” Vincent intones, “Comes the echo of hungry howls. Comes a warrior of the tooth and the claw: one who knows the red rush of the berserkergang. The legend made flesh. The Fenrir.”

He sweeps his hand out in a grand gesture and Dean is led into the cage, chained and collared. The tinted light catches in his dark hair and makes his pale skin gleam honey gold. He’s beautiful, so beautiful that it makes Sam’s chest hurt to look at him, and from the murmurs that sweep through the audience, he isn’t the only one who appreciates the view.

How many of the people here tonight have seen more than just his brother’s bare chest? How many of them have laid their hands on his soft, pale skin? How many have pressed their mouths to his lips?

Digging his fingers into the arms of his chair, Sam deliberately blanks his face and mind. He watches as Dean is led to Vincent’s side and made to kneel, head bowed to display the tattoo between his shoulder blades. The chains are removed but the collar stays: a heavy metal band across his throat.

“I have caged his power with my mark, and he is mine to command,” Vincent recites, sliding his hand through Dean’s hair. “Tonight, he fights not for you or I, but for the gods of old.”

Bela swears under her breath, but Sam can’t tear his eyes from the scene beneath him to look at her.

Dean rises to his feet in a smooth motion as the two men who led him in return. They’re each carrying a single, iron-grey glove, and Sam can tell by the way that they’re carrying them with two hands, and by the way their muscles are tensed, that the gloves are heavy.

No, he corrects himself as the men approach the center of the mat. Not gloves: _weapons_.

Three long, curving blades protrude from the knuckles of the gloves, and despite the resemblance it isn’t Wolverine that Sam thinks of but the story Dean told him about how he was infected. About the near-insane berserker with his homemade wolf claws. This pair is for Dean, though, and that makes Sam nervous.

Given what Dean is capable of, providing him with weapons is just going to overbalance a playing field that was already ludicrously uneven. It doesn’t make any sense: not unless Dean is going to be fighting something that’s just as strong as he is. Sam can’t even begin to imagine what Vincent got his hands on that could give his brother a run for his money, let alone necessitate _arming_ him.

But Dean holds out first one hand and then the other and the gloves are strapped into place. He clenches his hands into fists and then opens them again. Drops his head and stands there, waiting.

“A man with the soul of a beast and a wolf’s claws,” Vincent says, resting one hand on the small of Dean’s back. “Do you see him, ladies and gentlemen? Is he not marvelous?”

There’s another murmur from the audience, half agreement and half hunger—for blood, for Dean, for a stomach-turning combination of the two—and Dean is suddenly as tense as a dog on point. His head snaps up, jaw tight and eyes gleaming. Despite the timing, Sam knows instantly that his brother isn’t reacting to the crowd. No, Dean has caught sight _(scent)_ of his opponent for the night and is watching them approach.

Vincent follows the path of Dean’s gaze with his own eyes and his mouth curves up in a predatory smile as he continues, “Yet there are more things in Heaven and Earth … and in Hell …”

And Sam _knows_ , even before Dean’s opponent finally steps into the light. Everything he’s been straining to piece together for the last four days snaps into place with an abruptness that leaves him breathless.

The salt lining the path from the elevator and ringing the cage.

Vincent’s promise that he found something for Dean to fight that was as impressive as another berserker.

Dean’s urgent need to get Sam out of the Arena, to keep him away, to _protect_ him.

Meg’s mocking announcement that she knew where Dean was, that they _all_ knew … How else could those black-eyed sons of bitches have known?

Vincent said he found something for Dean to fight that was just as impressive as another berserker and he wasn’t lying.

The door that’s been nagging Sam ever since he first saw it—the door on the eleventh level marked Yggdrasil—appears before him again. This time, it swings open to reveal an impossible patch of forest. Grass carpets the floor, and several young oak trees stretch up toward the sky. Thick bushes spring up between the trees, and there are even a few clumps of violet wildflowers.

The illusion of looking through a portal to some distant place lasts for all of a second and then Sam spots the dull green walls, and realizes that the ‘sky’ is nothing more than a ceiling that’s been painted blue. UV lamps are mounted at the top of the walls and span the ceiling in five long strips. The middle strip is bisected by a square hole.

Sam flows into that hole and is drawn up through the long, metal shaft beyond. Faster and faster he hurtles, until he finally shatters through the glass at the top of the shaft and emerges into the night sky. The moon fills his gaze for a single moment, round and bright and tinged a sickly maroon color, and then he plunges back down into the false forest.

The room is different now: all the overhead lights turned off and a bonfire burning beneath the shaft. A naked man kneels beside the fire with the body of a rabbit in his hands and a fresh knife wound over his heart. Sam is in time to catch the last few words of ritual, and then the fire explodes, enveloping the man’s body for a moment before roaring up the shaft in a cyclone.

For a single beat of Sam’s heart, the room is still. Then black smoke seeps in through the joins in the walls. The man looks at the smoke, confused, and then drops the rabbit as it spears toward him. As the smoke—the demon—funnels inside the man’s mouth, the vision releases Sam and leaves him gaping sightlessly down at the cage.

Oh God, how could he have been so _blind_? He’s been trying to figure out for days why berserkers stopped using the original ritual and he had the answer the entire fucking time: he _saw_ it.

It can take days for an open summons like that to reach a compatible animal spirit.

Demons are far less picky.

It must have taken them a while to figure out what the animal spirits were doing, and how, but demons are nothing if not persistent. And when they finally realized what was going on, it would have been child’s play for them to watch for one of those broad, open-ended calls and answer before anything else could.

Vincent, who knows enough lore to understand the difference between the original ritual and the pale imitation commonly used today, would have found that out for himself when he tried to secure himself a second berserker of Dean’s caliber.

Sam doesn’t know how Vincent survived that first demon. Dumb luck, probably. Vincent’s a cautious man; he would have put more protections in place than he thought he’d need. And at least one of those protections was strong enough to hold the demon until Vincent figured out what he was dealing with.

Did Vincent put Dean in the cage with his accidental acquisition because he knew about the war? Sam doesn’t think it’s likely: not unless Bela let the man read her copy of Tyr’s Bible. No, in his economical way, Vincent just decided that two supernatural creatures fighting to the death would make for good entertainment.

The show must have exceeded his expectations for him to have continued summoning demons.

 _Where the hell is he keeping them?_ Sam wonders, and then realizes that there’s only one place in the Arena that Vincent possibly can be keeping them: only one place that seemed to have no purpose when they were looking at the floor plans. Looks like those rooms on the twelfth floor aren’t as empty as Sam thought.

No wonder Dean freaked out when Sam mentioned going down there with him.

“Jesus,” he breathes, shaken.

“It isn’t a problem,” Bela says quickly. “They won’t get in the way: I checked.”

“You knew,” Sam says. It shouldn’t be a surprise after everything else she’s lied to him about, but somehow it is. “You fucking _knew_ that they were here!”

Bela starts to stammer out an excuse, but Sam isn’t paying any attention to her. He’s too intent on the two men being ushered into the cage. No, not men: demons. Even from this height, he can make out the black pools of their eyes.

The demons are bare-chested like Dean, and also wear those loose fighting pants—red and gold to Dean’s black. Identical brands mark their chests just above the right nipple: burn scars in the shape of a ring with a line bisecting one edge. Vincent’s mark of ownership, maybe.

The handcuffs around the demons’ wrists are also decorated with symbols: Sumerian, Sam thinks, but he can’t be sure without a closer look. Either those cuffs are restraining the demons’ powers or they’ve agreed to this, because they aren’t attacking the men shoving them forward, or Vincent, or _(most importantly)_ Dean.

They’re well aware of Dean’s presence, though, staring at him with an intensity that borders on fanaticism. Their faces twist in cruel hunger, and almost as soon as he identifies the expression, Sam realizes that he can actually _taste_ their hatred on the back of his tongue: warm and coppery like blood. If he weren’t holding his power down with all the strength he can muster, that loathing would be inside of him instead of just lapping up against him like waves on a shore: an instinctive hatred that he’s gained along with his powers from the demon blood running through his veins.

Dean is shivering in the center of the ring, but not from fear. His entire body is quivering with the need to attack, to rend, to tear. His eyes burn so brightly they’re molten, dripping fire and flame and fury. His lips are drawn back from his teeth in a snarl, and Sam is almost surprised to see flat incisors instead of a wolf’s sharp canines.

Vincent’s hand slips up Dean’s back and curls around his neck. His fingers dig into Dean’s skin above the metal collar, his thumb below. Sam has no doubt that the hold is meant as a reminder to wait.

“… just have worried you. They aren’t a problem. They _aren’t_ , Sam.” Bela. Still yammering on in his ear and sounding more and more worried that he’s going to do something stupid. As though he’s angry that she concealed this from him.

Well, Sam isn’t angry. He’s furious. Not just with her, either, but with Dean. Dean, who still thinks he knows best even after his last attempt to decide what Sam should and shouldn’t know landed him here in the first place.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam grates out, and for a miracle Bela does.

It isn’t that Sam is worried the demons are going to be a problem. It’s that, if he’d only known they were here, he could have gotten Dean out days ago. If all of those rooms on the twelfth floor are occupied, then Sam could have razed the building to the ground and left nothing more than a smoking crater and some charred bones behind.

 _No,_ he corrects himself with difficulty. _I would have tried and it would have backfired. I would have killed Dean._

Hell, he thought it himself a moment ago: if he the dark power hadn’t been shoved into the farthest corner of his mind, then the demons’ hatred of _(meat mongrels)_ berserkers would be infecting him as well. And in order to control the demons, Sam would need to _center_ himself in that darkness: would need to open his soul and mind to that hostile, violent taint.

He wants to think that he would be able to resist for Dean—for his brother whom he loves—but he knows better. If that hatred ever catches hold of him, he won’t be able to see anything but the animal spirit beneath Dean’s skin. Won’t be able to do anything but rip through all that meat in an attempt to get at the spirit inside.

None of that makes Sam any happier about being lied to again, of course, but the knowledge of what might have happened—what he might have _done_ —is sobering enough that he’s able to focus on the rest of Vincent’s introduction.

“He is the moon,” Vincent says, “And they the hollow black of night. He is everything warm and alive. They are the chill cold of death. Fire against frost, light against dark, gold against black. Their war is endless, and this but another small skirmish on the battlegrounds of eternity.”

Sam isn’t sure how long Vincent would have gone on in that vein, but Dean moves restlessly under his hand, shifting forward before settling back again. It’s obvious that he won’t be delayed much longer.

“Tonight,” Vincent calls, pitching his voice louder, “There is no choice: no restraint. This is the bloodied plain called Vigrid, and Ragnarök is nigh.” He permits himself a pause, scanning the audience, and then intones, “To the death.”

“To the death,” comes an answering murmur from the crowd. It has the feel of ritual, words worn familiar through repetition.

Sam isn’t surprised. Just seeing Dean and the demons stand across from one another is more of a show than he’s seen since he got here. Vincent could just toss them all into the cage and say ‘go’ and there would still be an awful magnificence to the ensuing fight. Although he doesn’t know it, this is what Vincent claimed—one battle among many in a war that has no end in sight—and it reeks of mystical energy.

Dean’s chest visibly rises and falls as Vincent hurries from the cage. Sam can see the sheen of sweat across his brother’s forehead. The tension in the room is thick and horrible, like those last few seconds before a fatal car wreck, and Sam just wants it over, he wants it fucking done, wants the meat mongrel dead—

 _No._

Raising a shaking hand to his forehead, Sam concentrates and pushes the power back. It takes more effort this time. The darkness inside of him is growing at an alarming rate, strengthening, and his proximity to the demons below isn’t helping his control either. Something in them resonates with the darkness, urging it forward without Sam’s permission.

The clang the cage door makes when it shuts behind Vincent echoes in the room. For a few heartbeats, everything is still and silent, and then the cuffs on the demons’ wrists open and fall to the mat.

Sam has seen his brother take on more opponents than this while he was blindfolded, but those fighters were human. Now, although Dean is armed and the demons aren’t—although he was straining forward throughout Vincent’s introductions—he gives way before the demons’ advance. The demons split up, giving chase in a leisurely fashion that is completely at odds with the hatred radiating from them.

Dean avoids the demons with effortless grace until they pick up the pace, and even then it’s like watching a strange, intricate dance. The crowd should be bored—no blood, no contact—but instead anticipation fills the room with a sharp, copper tang. Sam isn’t immune to it himself tonight: half-caught by the demons’ bloodlust, he leans forward in his seat and curls his hands on the railing.

One of the demons—the blond in the red pants—cuts sharply to the left and for a moment Sam thinks that Dean is finally going to get hit. His brother breaks right at the last moment and Blondie’s punch passes through the air a few inches from Dean’s face.

Blondie corrects and turns to pursue, tossing a glance at the second demon as it sprints after Dean. Both of them alter their courses slightly and Sam can tell that, just as they have a dozen times before, they’re going to try boxing Dean in against the side of the cage.

This time, though, Dean charges instead of trying to slip between them. His right hand lashes out and the metal claws of the glove gore the dark-haired demon’s shoulder. It howls in pain, but that doesn’t stop it from driving a fist into Dean’s face in return. Hurled backward by the blow, Dean fetches up heavily against the side of the cage and drops to his knees.

The sight of Dean flying through the air makes Sam frown from more than just concern. He saw his brother hurled like that before—by Meg, and then by the yellow-eyed demon—and they didn’t need to strike Dean to make that happen. Sam was too caught up in holding off the creeping hatred to think about it before, but now he has to wonder why the demons aren’t using their power to fling Dean against the cage and hold him there. Why they aren’t bleeding him out with a look, or crushing him against the metal mesh with the unrelenting weight of Hell.

Below, Dean picks himself up and dodges to the side just in time to avoid being tackled to the mat again. Sam’s confusion deepens. His brother is moving even slower than the other two times Sam watched him fight, and that doesn’t make any sense at all. Faced with real opponents, Dean should be moving faster: should be approaching that blur of speed Sam saw in the Gymnasium.

Then Blondie connects with a punch hard enough to open Dean’s brow and the darkness inside of Sam vibrates like a plucked string. Before Dean hits the mat, halfway across the cage from where Blondie punched him, Sam’s eyes widen in understanding. His breath huffs out in a surprised grunt.

The demons _are_ using their power: it just isn’t working. Somehow, Dean is using the wolf to shield himself. Whatever he’s doing is effective enough to keep the demons from pinning him against the side of the cage like a bug on a windshield, but it’s taking a toll on his body. Slowing him. Weakening him.

There are two battles going on down there—one physical and one purely mental—and the invisible battle is going to decide this fight.

Dean drags his forearm quickly across his brow, wiping some of the blood clear, but Sam can tell it’s getting in his brother’s left eye anyway. The demons notice as well and switch strategies: one of them holding Dean’s attention while the other comes in at his blind side and lands a punch or a kick that sends him sprawling.

If this keeps up much longer then Dean won’t be in any kind of shape to make a run for it tonight.

The concern that tightens Sam’s mouth finally blocks out the power’s call enough that he can focus almost exclusively on the fight. It only takes him a few minutes to see that the demons are toying with his brother the way that Dean toyed with Basu. Amusement curls their lips into hateful sneers as they land blow after blow, and each time Dean is a little slower getting to his feet.

Sam knows Vincent would never let Dean be killed, but that doesn’t stop him from sucking in a sharp breath as the dark-haired demon closes in on Dean’s left side. There’s a deliberateness to the other demon’s movements that tells Sam this isn’t a game anymore—it’s going to hit Dean hard: hit him with the intent to incapacitate him. And although Dean has to know what the demons are doing by now, he can’t afford to take his eyes off of Blondie. Thoughts of concussions and brain damage shoot through Sam’s head as his brother is driven back toward the waiting demon, and he clutches the railing helplessly.

Within striking distance now, the dark-haired demon raises its hand. It pivots to put its entire weight behind the coming blow, and Dean spins without warning. Thrusting his fist out in front of him, he drives the metal claws deep into the demon’s stomach. At the same moment, his leg shoots out, delivering a side kick to Blondie’s chest and hurling it across the cage with bone-shattering force.

Sam has never been so relieved to see blood spilled. Now that his brother has shown his hand, he remembers Dean’s first fight: the way he hadn’t needed to see his opponents to track them. Dean has been _letting_ the demons hit him, drawing them close and letting their confidence build so that he could do exactly what he’s doing now.

With a cold grin on his face, Dean yanks the claws to the side. The movement opens the demon’s stomach and spills its guts out in a flopping, red mess. It backs away, trailing intestines as it fights to hold its stomach inside the ruin Dean made of its abdomen. It isn’t anywhere close to being dead, of course, and that only makes the nightmarish scene even more grotesque than it already was.

Sam’s skin crawls as the demon turns, trying to run. An instant later, he has to shut his eyes against the sight of Dean deliberately stepping on a length of intestine in order to halt the demon’s retreat.

The approving roar of the crowd swells around him, warm and familiar, and Sam chances a glance to find his brother slicing up the demon’s chest. On his third pass, one of the metal claws slices through the circular brand and the demon’s mouth immediately opens. Black smoke pours from the man's lips. Dean’s eyes flash triumphantly and, with a burst of that eerie speed, he reaches for the fleeing demon.

Sam expects the smoke to slide right through his brother’s fingers, but instead Dean’s hands sink into the demon as though it’s dense enough to grab. He yanks forward, pulling it free from the man’s mouth and completely ignoring the final, spastic twitches of the abandoned body as it collapses to the mat.

Holding the demon close with his left hand, Dean swipes at it with his right. A gold glow sparks out from his fingers, and Sam knows instinctively that it’s that light that is shredding the demon into black tatters and not the metal, man-made claws.

He gets in almost four strikes before he’s lifted and hurled against the cage.

Sam jumps, startled. Watching Dean disembowel dark-haired demon made him all but forget that his brother had more than one opponent. Blondie is making its presence known now, though: holding Dean up against the side of the cage with its power while it wrenches a dislocated shoulder back into place.

For a moment, Sam can’t figure out why his brother is letting himself be held. Then he takes in Dean’s snarling, red face, and realizes that Dean isn’t ‘letting’ anything happen. Attacking the dark-haired demon in its ethereal form seems to have sapped a great deal of his energy, and he just doesn’t have enough left to fight Blondie’s hold. He can only dangle against the cage wall while bits of congealed black smoke drip from his hands.

What’s left of the dark-haired demon is rapidly melting into a mushy puddle on the mat, but Blondie doesn’t give it so much as a glance as it stalks across the cage toward Dean. Sam is almost certain that the son of a bitch is talking, but he can’t hear it over the crowd and it has its back to him so he can’t read its lips. Which is probably a good thing, considering the way that Dean is closing his eyes and turning his head to one side: denial, maybe, or an attempt to block out the demon’s taunts.

Blondie draws to a stop in front of Dean and trails its fingers through the blood that smears his stomach. Keeping his eyes shut, Dean visibly swallows and clenches his jaw. After almost a minute of that eerie stroking, the demon brings its hand to its mouth. It sucks its fingers one by one until they’re clean again and then reaches for Dean’s right hand.

With slow, methodical movements, Blondie unbuckles first one glove and then the other. The way the weapons drop to the mat with a single thud and lay where they fall tells Sam just how heavy they were, and a detached, cold part of him is amazed that Dean was able to _lift_ them, let alone fight in them.

Dean is unarmed now, and the audience’s shouts die down to silence as the demon goes back to stroking his skin. Perhaps sensing that the noise of the crowd no longer leaves them the illusion of privacy, Blondie leans up on its tiptoes to whisper in Dean’s ear. Dean goes tense and then slumps in a defeated, broken way that makes Sam’s chest ache.

Laughing, Blondie begins to draw back, and that’s when Dean strikes. He can’t move his body, but the demon left him enough leeway to snap his head around. His mouth meets Blondie’s neck and for a heartbeat it looks like Dean is kissing it.

Then Sam sees the spurt of red—hears the demon’s shocked cry—and knows that his brother has sunk his teeth into the damned thing’s neck. Dean shakes his head, worrying at Blondie like a dog with a piece of meat, and a few seconds later he drops back onto his feet. His right hand shoots out, gripping the back of the demon’s head and holding it close: holding it like a lover.

Sam knows the moment Dean tears open Blondie’s jugular: he can smell the explosion of blood as a rush of metal on the air. An instant later, Dean releases the demon and lets it stagger back, one hand to its ruined throat. Dean’s chin and mouth are dripping red, and more blood slicks his chest. Even his teeth are tinted crimson when he grins.

Blondie makes a weak gesture in Dean’s direction, pushing him back a few inches. Neck corded and muscles straining, Dean leans into the power, and after a moment Sam feels something in the room give way slightly as his brother takes a step. Dean pauses, gathering his strength, and then pushes again. Steps forward.

The demon holds for three more steps and then breaks, turning to run. Its heart is still gamely pumping, spilling blood over its fingers and out onto the mat. Sam has no idea how long Blondie is going to be able to keep the host’s body alive when it’s losing this much blood, but it doesn’t show any sign of trying to flee. The other demon didn’t either, he remembers: not even when it was clear its body was dying.

Not until Dean cut through the brand on its chest.

Sam wonders if that mark might be more than just a symbol of Vincent’s domination and then he isn’t thinking about anything except Dean. There isn’t any room inside his mind for anything but the sight of his brother slapping the demon’s hand away from its throat and shoving his own fingers inside the wound.

Blondie strikes at Dean with weak, clumsy blows that he easily ignores. Holding the demon up with his left hand, he reaches deeper inside with his right, shoving his arm down its throat and into its chest until he’s buried in Blondie’s body up to his elbow. Once he’s in deep enough, he starts rooting around.

Sam can’t see his brother’s look of intense concentration clearly from here but he knows it intimately enough to fill in the details. Dean always wore that expression when he was fiddling with the inner workings of anything mechanical: deep furrow between his eyebrows, eyes narrowed until he’s all but squinting, just a hint of tongue poking past his lips.

It’s too much, knowing that Dean is tasting all of that blood—that he’s dispassionately playing with someone’s insides the way he used to tinker with the EMF reader or a particularly tricky lock—and Sam’s throat strains silently. He can’t seem to get any air into his lungs. Fuck, it feels like it’s _his_ chest that Dean is rummaging through, and he can’t watch this anymore. He’s on the verge of moving—maybe to leave, maybe to do something even more disastrous—when Dean’s face finally clears.

Black smoke clings to his fingers as he yanks his arm free. Releasing his hold on Blondie’s shoulder, Dean steps back and more of the demon stretches out from the hole that’s all that remains of his throat. The demon doesn’t look much like smoke anymore. It's changing consistency as Dean pulls it loose: congealing into black, oily taffy that drips and steams under the spotlights.

The blond man’s body collapses finally, but Dean continues to pull until the last, ragged threads trail from the corpse’s throat and slither down onto the mat. He has an armful of the viscous stuff now, and he tightens his grip on it for a moment, that gold light sparking from his fingers and a smell like burnt ozone on the air, before tossing it to the floor. The demon is nothing more than a pulpy lump now, and it twitches once before beginning to dissolve.

There’s a long, endless moment where all that Sam can hear is his own heartbeat pounding through his head and the over-loud echoes of his brother’s labored breathing. The applause that comes doesn’t so much shatter the silence as shove it aside in an almost physical wave. Sam’s ears pop with the force, and Dean flinches below.

Dean is forced to endure the sound, which has to be painful with his hearing as sensitive as it is, for almost two minutes and then cage door opens. He darts through before it’s even finished swinging back and vanishes into the darkness beyond, leaving behind his own bloodied footprints and two mangled corpses. Of the demons, there’s no longer any sign, but Sam knows they didn’t just flit back to Hell. Dean killed them. He ripped them apart with his bare hands.

“Sam?”

Sam can tell from the tone of Bela’s voice that she’s been calling his name for a while. He blinks down at her hand on his arm, glances back to the sodden mat, and then looks up at her face. His smile feels lopsided on his lips, like it wants to slip off and pool on the floor.

“Sam?” she repeats.

Sam unglues his voice and chokes out, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

He isn’t sick, but it’s a near thing. Bela rubs the back of his neck in soothing little circles while the audience files out and Sam closes his eyes and concentrates on the scent of her perfume instead of all the blood and his body calms. His mind is a little more reluctant to let go—mostly because the darkness is demanding to know why he let that happen, why he didn’t help kill the meat mongrel—but eventually it subsides to an unhappy grumble.

“Better?” Bela asks.

Sam opens his eyes to find the stadium all but empty around them and nods. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Mr. Carver?”

Sam lifts his eyes to the black-suited man who has just stepped around the low wall ringing their seats. “Yeah?”

“The Fenrir is ready for you.”


	23. Reclamation

Once you know him, Dean’s pretty predictable. He has patterns of behavior spreading deep roots through him, as unshakable as computer algorithms. The sarcastic scorn, the jokes: they’re all part of it. Sam has his own instinctual reactions, of course: Dean’s been using them to keep him off balance and away from anything Dean doesn’t want to discuss.

He’s going to try it again tonight—partly because of what happened between them last night, but mainly because Sam knows about the demons now: knows why Dean has been trying so strenuously to push him away. There are only so many methods of distraction that are habitual for Dean, though. He might ignore Sam again. Might try and channel Sam’s expected anger into something he’s more prepared to argue about by bringing up his ‘death’. Might try to guilt Sam into stammering apologies by focusing on last night. Or he might just walk in here and start swinging.

It seems like a lot of options to plan for, but Sam feels fairly confident that he can handle anything his brother throws at him. He just needs to utilize some of the stubbornness that Winchesters are blessed with and stick to the topic. Lying about the demons first, escape plan second. With at least three hours to kill before Gordon and the others will be in position, there’s plenty of time for both.

His certainty that he can handle Dean’s initial attack doesn’t mean he’s at all certain how the rest of the night is going to go, though, and he can’t stop himself from pushing the Protean charms around on the top of the bar. He took them off as soon as he was safely inside the suite, leaving his jacket on. He wants Dean to be able to see his face when they’re talking, but the memory of last night is too close for him to be comfortable with just a dress shirt between him and his brother.

Rationally, Sam knows that the jacket isn’t going to dampen his desire any more than what he just saw in the cage, but that doesn’t stop him from hoping that it’ll make things a little easier. If nothing else, it might reassure Dean that he isn’t going to try anything tonight.

 _I can do this_ , he tells himself for the hundredth time. _I’ll be fine._

Then Dean storms through the door, his hair mussed from showering and slicked up in damp spikes, and Sam’s stomach plummets alarmingly. His brother is wearing a black shirt tonight, and his pale skin glows against the dark fabric like frozen moonlight. The cut above his eyebrow looks surprisingly fresh, considering how quickly Dean is healing lately. It’s being held closed with two small butterfly bandages, and the ugly bruise on the left side of his jaw where the demons hit him more than a few times is livid.

Although Dean’s gaze is muted by the Gleipnir, golden lightning is sliding through his green irises. By now, Sam has seen enough to know that the gold only comes when Dean is deliberately drawing on the wolf’s power, which means that he’s tapping into it right now.

The darkness inside of Sam reacts automatically, flinching back from the ferocity of Dean’s approach—and he _is_ approaching, his eyes fixed on Sam and his shoulders bunched aggressively. Sam is too busy wrestling the power back to do anything else, even though it’s beginning to look like Dean is opting for violence as his opening conversational gambit. Then Dean is right there, and he isn’t trying to hurt Sam but working furiously at his belt buckle.

 _Fuck yeah._

A shiver runs through his entire body, and the _needwantyes_ is strong enough to drown out the darkness. Which, ironically, means that Sam can finally focus on the fact that Dean is gearing up to shove his hand down Sam’s pants again.

“No!” he shouts, and shoves Dean back. “Damn it, Dean, I didn’t—I didn’t come here for that.”

“No?” Dean says, lips twitching sardonically. He shrugs and turns away, heading for the dining room table. Sam can tell from the way his brother’s back is moving that he’s unbuttoning his shirt.

“Listen,” he tries. “Can we just sit down and talk?” The last word comes out cracked as Dean drops his shirt to the floor.

There are no bruises tonight: nothing to mar the sensual perfection of broad shoulders and smooth, freckled skin. The saliva in Sam’s mouth dries up and he digs his fingers into the wood of the bar.

“Sure,” Dean answers as he turns around and sits on the edge of the table. “I mean, last night obviously wasn’t what you really wanted, so let’s just figure out what you _do_ want and get it over with.” Ducking his head slightly, he reaches back and starts to take off the wolf’s head choker.

“I’m not—I don’t want anything like that, man. I—last night, I shouldn’t have, and—”

“So how do you want me?” Dean interrupts him, putting the wolf’s head down on the table and sliding it backwards along the length of the gleaming wood. “Here? Had some good times on this table.”

Oh God, Sam can’t hear this.

“Naw, you’re a little vanilla for something like that, huh, Sammy? Well, guess that’s what the bed’s for.” Dean’s busy hands are on his own pants now, and the sight of his brother popping the top button open releases Sam from his paralysis.

Sprinting forward, he grabs Dean’s hands and shoves them down against the table, pinning them there where they can’t do any more damage. “Stop it,” he growls into his brother’s closed face.

The left side of Dean’s mouth quirks up and he says, “Gotta say, man, you’re kinkier than I gave you credit for.” He wiggles his hands against Sam’s grip and spreads his legs wider and fuck, _fuck_ , Sam likes it, Sam wants it but not like this, he already hurt Dean enough and he just _can’t_.

Dean wanted Sam to hit him last night and when Sam resisted everything went to hell. But that was then and this is now. If it’s gonna take a little violence to yank Dean back on track and get him to fucking shut up already, then that’s okay with Sam.

Releasing Dean’s wrists, he hauls his brother up by the arm and tosses him to the right. Dean staggers a few steps in that direction and Sam follows, shoving him back against the wall. Dean looked startled for about half a second there, but he’s already smirking again and Sam knows that his brother is about to start throwing barbs.

The right hook Sam sends into Dean’s jaw—directly on top of the bruise his brother is sporting—shuts him up immediately.

“Ow, fuck!” Dean complains. It’s a ludicrous protest—Dean has been hurt far worse than this and never made a sound—and Sam’s anger raises a notch.

“I’m not here to fuck you,” he snaps. “I’m not—not _ever_ —going to touch you like that again. I shouldn’t have done it last night, and I’m sorry as hell that I did. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making that up to you, I swear to God, but right now you need to shut up and listen to me.”

“If you aren’t here to use the merchandise, then I don’t want to hear it,” Dean shoots back, pushing forward.

Sam slams him into the wall again, risking a quick dash of power to make sure he goes and then releasing it again before the darkness can get a hold on him. Dean peers up at him, his expression wavering between shocked and confused, and Sam feels a rush of satisfaction. This is probably the first time in months that Dean has been manhandled by someone without making a conscious decision to let it happen.

“You should have told me about the demons,” Sam says before Dean can recover from his surprise. “Goddamn it, Dean, we’ve been over this! You can’t keep deciding what’s best for me.”

Fear flickers through Dean’s Gleipnir-damped eyes at the mention of the demons. Sam expects his brother to try to bolt again, or to rap out a biting comment designed to take the conversation down a completely new path.

What Dean does is grab Sam’s hair and haul him in for a kiss.

Sam’s mouth drops open a little in surprise at the press of soft lips against his and that’s all the opening Dean needs. Twining his hands in Sam’s hair, he swipes his tongue roughly into Sam’s mouth. The press of Dean’s lips is almost punishingly hard, and when he slips his tongue back it’s only so that he can bite down on Sam’s lower lip. It’s instinct to fight back—too many years of brotherly competition have been ingrained into Sam to give him any chance of doing the smart thing and jerking free.

Dean makes a low, surprised sound when Sam’s hands come up and grab his face. Sam drags his tongue along Dean’s lips and is fiercely triumphant when they part easily for him. Hooking his thumbs beneath his brother’s jaw, he tilts Dean’s head further up until he’s positioned the way Sam wants him, and then plunges in.

Sam had Dean’s mouth last night, and it isn’t any cooler now. He feels feverish as he licks into that velvet heat. The only thing better than tasting the inside of his brother’s mouth is sucking Dean’s pouty lower lip between his teeth and working at it until Dean’s breath stutters.

It’s their first kiss, and it should be awkward for more reasons than lack of practice. Dean is doing this out of a desperate attempt to avoid talking, and Sam is driven by his anger, and it shouldn’t feel this natural. Sam’s rage shouldn’t be draining away, leaving him shivering inside and almost overcome with the need to protect his brother: to soothe away the hurt and the fear and make everything right again.

God, this feels so _familiar_ …

Dean makes another one of those noises that are going straight to Sam’s core—something that hangs between a moan and a whimper—and Sam lets his brother’s irresistible, magnetic pull draw him closer. It feels like falling, giving into his own desire, and Sam’s hands are trembling against his brother’s cheeks. He can feel Dean’s heart beating wildly against his chest, Dean’s flat stomach against his own, Dean’s—

Sam jerks back with a strangled gasp, eyes wide and disbelieving. Dean leans where he is, dropping his hands back to his sides and resting his head against the wall. His lips are red and slightly swollen from the kiss, his eyelids heavy, his face the perfect image of debauchery, but all of Sam’s concentration is on something else.

Something lower.

With his breath coming in shallow pants, Dean follows Sam’s gaze. When he realizes what Sam’s staring at, he lets out a despairing laugh and then, closing his eyes, turns his head to one side. “So now you know.”

Sam thinks of the wolf _(smell us on you. smell us here. marked you.)_ and then of his dream. He thinks of Dean morphing back and forth from one version of his brother to another as Sam’s sleeping mind rocked them in and out of touch like a wave. But the eyes … the eyes were always the same.

Swallowing is difficult, but Sam manages it. He never knew that relief could be so painful: that his chest could be so lightened by the absence of guilt that it feels hollow.

“How long?” he croaks.

Dean shrugs. “I don’t know. It—I’m not gay. I don’t—I’m not into dudes, okay? I didn’t even—” He breaks off into another grating laugh and then says bitterly, “I didn’t even know how guys did it before I got here. They had to show me.”

“Dean—” Sam starts, reaching forward.

Dean moves like quicksilver, slapping his hand away and darting free from the wall. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Sam gapes at his brother. “I can’t—Jesus Christ, Dean, I can’t believe you just said that! What, it’s okay as long as I think you don’t want it?”

Dean’s face hovers in the shadowland between broken and furious. “I don’t want your pity, Sam. I don’t need it.”

“You mean you can’t afford it,” Sam corrects.

Dean’s mouth presses into a thin line. Looks like he’s decided to get angry. “No, Sam, I _can’t_ afford it. Because when you leave I’m still stuck here, and I don’t know how you’ve been paying for it this long, but you can’t swing it forever. Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to drop my pants again, and excuse me if I don’t want to have to think about this when I do.” Finished, he scrubs a hand through his hair roughly.

Sam firms his jaw and steps forward.

“I said no, damn it!” Dean shouts, backing further away.

“Funny how that starts to matter when you’re the one saying it,” Sam points out, and Dean flushes but doesn’t drop his eyes. “Jesus, Dean, I spent last night crying because I thought I hurt you. I thought I _raped_ you!”

Dean flinches and his face tightens in an expression of pained panic. Sam doesn’t like seeing that look on his brother’s face anymore than Dean likes hearing that word, but they’re both going to have to get used to it. Sam isn’t ducking away from the issue: isn’t going to let Dean hide it behind a façade of lies. Because maybe Dean wants Sam, but he sure as hell didn’t want any of the other people he was with, and if he’s ever going to move past it then he has to acknowledge what they did to him.

Dean’s face wavers uncertainly and then firms again as he shores himself up. His eyes flicker down to Sam’s neck for the first time—to the place Geri bit him—and he says, “Yeah, looks like you were real torn up about it.”

Sam stares at his brother for a moment before it sinks in. Dean’s _jealous_. He’s jealous because he thinks Sam was with someone else last night.

It’s so ironic that Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or a little of all three. He could explain the bite mark to his brother, but he isn’t going to. Explanations would lead to Dean finding out that Sam has been in his mind not once or twice but three times, and Sam isn’t ready to handle his brother’s reaction to that information. Later, once everything has been sorted out, he’ll sit Dean down and tell him about this past week—tell him _everything_ —but for now they’re both going to have to live with Dean’s assumptions.

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Sam says, taking another step closer. Dean tenses, but this time he holds his ground. “You did it deliberately, didn’t you?”

Dean’s expression doesn’t change—just as hostile and closed off as ever—but the faint flicker in his eyes is all the answer Sam needs.

Uttering a humorless laugh, he shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable, man. It doesn’t matter to you how I feel, does it? As long as I’m ‘safe’.”

“Oh, come on, Sam! We both know you would’ve gotten over it.”

Sam is so completely floored by the stupidity of that statement that he can’t do anything but gape at his brother. Dean softens a little in the face of Sam’s incredulity, ducking his head and rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Besides,” he adds. “It’s my job.”

Sam can’t even _begin_ to correct Dean’s self-esteem issues, which were many and varied before Vincent got to him, so he decides to answer the second, only slightly less idiotic assumption his brother is making.

“No, Dean, it’s not. Dad _made_ it your job, and you let him, but that wasn’t fair to you, and it wasn’t fair to me, and you need to stop.” He sounds angrier than he means to, and for a moment he’s worried that Dean is going to snap back out of self-defense, but his brother just looks at him helplessly.

“I’ve been taking care of you my whole life, Sam,” Dean says. “I can’t just _stop_.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Sam answers immediately, backtracking. It wasn’t what he meant, anyway. “What I _expect_ is for you to let me take care of you every once in a while.”

The last, lingering remnants of Dean’s mulish nerves have been damped down by Sam’s words. He shifts from one foot to the other, hands dangling awkwardly at his sides, and with a four-year-old’s bewildered, lost expression. Sam’s chest aches violently to see his brother so disoriented by the idea that someone might want to take care of _him_. Someone shielding Dean Winchester instead of the other way around. He can’t make Dean understand right now—that’s going to take years—but he can at least ease some of the pain lurking in his brother’s eyes, as well as the ache in his own chest.

Carefully, he starts forward again.

Dean shakes his head but doesn’t back up. Sam’s pretty sure it’s only because he can’t figure out how to run anymore.

“Don’t do this,” Dean begs. “I can’t keep doing this if you—”

Then Sam’s arms are around him, Sam is pulling him close, and Dean is letting it happen.

“You don’t have to,” Sam whispers into his brother’s ear. His fingers stroke through the damp hair at the nape of Dean’s neck and Dean shivers against him. “We’re leaving tonight. Everything’s arranged.”

“No!” Dean blurts, panicked. He pushes at Sam’s chest, but it’s a weak attempt. Now that Sam has him, he can feel how much Dean needs this: needs some physical contact that isn’t about taking but giving.

“No, I can’t—I need my shot, I need—”

“I know, man. It’s okay. We’re gonna bring some with us.” Sam runs his hand lightly down his brother’s back, the way Dean used to when Sam was young and frightened by a nightmare. “I talked to Ash and he’s working on finding a chemist.”

Not that Sam is going to use whoever Ash finds: there’s too great a risk of Bobby showing up unannounced. But Sam is confident that he can find someone on his own, and he doesn’t care what he has to do to make them cooperate.

Dean shakes his head, but he’s getting heavier in Sam’s arms as his body accepts the comfort his mind continues to refuse. “The demons, they’re down there, and I can’t—you—”

“They aren’t a problem.”

Dean snorts into Sam’s collarbone.

“They aren’t a problem,” Sam repeats more firmly. “You have to trust me here. The only one in danger from them is you, and I won’t let anything happen, okay?”

“Oh, well then, let me just pack my bags,” Dean mutters. The words are right, but the way his voice trembles is all wrong: a sign of weakness Dean never would have shown before. His hands come to rest on Sam’s hips, light as a hummingbird. It’s as though he’s afraid that if he really reaches out to Sam, clings to him the way Sam can tell he wants to, that everything is going to dissolve away like spun sugar.

Tightening his own grip to compensate— _I’m here, this is real_ —Sam murmurs, “Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean mumbles, and just like that he’s clutching Sam close, his arms like iron bars around Sam’s torso. “You came. Fuck, you really came. I thought I was gonna die here, I thought—”

Dean’s defenses are flaking into dust, and Sam wants to let it happen—God, does he want to—but now isn’t the time. In three hours, they need to be ready to move, and Sam has the feeling that once Dean lets himself fall it’ll take months just to get him functioning again.

“Shh,” he says, brushing his lips against Dean’s cheek in a gentle kiss. He feels a rush of joy that he’s allowed to do that now. “It’s gonna be okay, man. Right now, though, you’ve gotta hold it together. Just a little longer, okay? Just until we’re out of here.”

“Okay,” Dean agrees without hesitation, and then he turns his head and catches Sam’s lips in another kiss. The one is as furiously desperate as their last, but softened by pleading and tempered by the knowledge that Dean is kissing him because he wants to and not as a diversionary tactic.

Sam lets his brother control the kiss as long as he can—Dean’s had precious few things under his control these last six months—but he’s too hungry himself to be passive for long. He feels like he’s in shock as he slows the kiss: deepens it. Hell, he probably is.

After years of hiding how he felt even from himself, and then months of thinking he was alone in this, he still half expects Dean to pull away in revulsion. He can’t fathom a world where Dean actually wants him back, but this is real. It has to be, because Sam never would have imagined the noises Dean’s making.

He heard his brother with the girls he used to bring back with him, and Dean never sounded like this. Never sounded so shattered by need: so completely devastated by the weight of desire. Sam licks the sounds from his brother’s lips: wants to drown himself in them.

Abruptly, Dean pulls back enough to whisper, “Please, can we—do we have time?” His hands, clumsy for the first time in Sam’s memory, start to fight with the buttons on Sam’s shirt.

Three hours is plenty of time for what Dean is asking for, but Sam shakes his head and gently pushes his brother’s hands away. “Not here, okay? I don’t want to do this here.”

Dean is shaking against him in a way that makes Sam think of the injured rabbit he found at the edge of a parking lot in Pennsylvania when he was six. He picked it up and carried it back to his big brother, knowing that Dean would be able to fix the gash in the rabbit’s hind leg, and the rabbit’s eyes were wide and terrified the entire time. It trembled in his hands so badly that Sam still could still feel the vibrations when Dean helped him bury the rabbit a half-hour later. Died of fright, Dean told him with the voice of authority, and the rabbit haunted his dreams for almost three weeks after that.

But Dean isn’t a rabbit, and his words have a rough, irrational edge that Sam associates with junkies going through withdrawal. “Come on, man, I need—I need something to—”

Sam catches his brother’s mouth again, shutting him up. He strokes Dean’s back with soft, reassuring caresses until the tremors racking his frame subside and his heart rate slows. When Dean is calmer, Sam rests his chin on his brother’s shoulder and kisses the side of his neck.

“I love you, Dean,” he says. “We’re gonna get through this.”

“I don’t—you deserve better, Sam, you—”

Sam bites down sharply on Dean’s shoulder and the rest of that nonsense breaks off in a gasp. He immediately lets go again and nuzzles at the reddened skin.

“I don’t ever want to hear that again.” His voice is harsh, making it an order, although he’s pretty sure that Dean isn’t going to be able to follow this one. Not yet.

It’s difficult to let go of his brother even for a few seconds, but Sam makes himself. Dean’s eyes are shinier than they should be, moist with unshed tears, and Sam can’t help rubbing his thumb across one arching, beautiful cheekbone. When he leans in for another kiss, it’s the splatter of freckles across the bridge of Dean’s nose he aims for, and Dean gives him a perplexed look.

“Get used to it,” Sam tells him with a slight smile, and then gently tugs Dean into the living room.

Dean needs a chance to recover himself a little, which means he needs to rest. The bedroom is out, especially now; Sam’s certain that his brother has too many bad memories of that bed. The couch is off limits for similar reasons, although the cushions on it have possibilities. Sam’s pretty sure that none of the rich bastards and bitches who bought his brother went in much for pillow piles on the floor.

“Wait here for a sec, okay?” he says, leaning Dean against the doorframe. Dean nods, although he looks baffled by Sam’s behavior, and holds onto the wood when Sam moves away. He looks sick or injured leaning there, and even though Sam knows the weakness is only the normal aftereffect of a strong surge of emotion, he’s anxious to lay Dean down and get him as comfortable as he possibly can here.

Yanking the pillows off the couch, Sam tosses them against the far wall. There’s a crimson velvet throw with gold stitching that probably cost about five thousand dollars and Sam grabs that as well, draping it over one arm on his way back to Dean.

“Okay,” he says, ducking a little so that Dean can sling one arm over his shoulder.

Dean gives him an annoyed look and says, “Dude, I’m not an invalid.”

As if Sam can’t see the way Dean’s legs are shaking.

Sam gives Dean his most earnest, pleading expression and Dean swears under his breath before giving in and letting Sam help him over to the pillows. The fact that the old, knee jerk reaction is still firmly ingrained in his brother makes Sam a lot more hopeful that Dean will make a full recovery from this and, in spite of the circumstances, he can’t keep himself from smiling.

When Dean realizes that Sam wants him to lie down, he balks again. Sam gives him a little nudge at the small of his back and says, “Come on, man. Just for a little while.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Dean tries, but Sam hooks his foot around Dean’s ankle and pulls back while giving another push forward and Dean’s too weary to catch his balance. The pillows soften his fall and he lies there facedown for a moment before cocking his head around and glaring.

“You're a pushy son of a bitch, you know that, Sammy?”

“We’ve got about three hours before we’ll be ready to move,” Sam says, taking the throw from his arm and shaking it open. “When we _do_ move, I’m gonna need you alert and with me, and right now you’re obviously exhausted. So you’re gonna take a nap. I’ll wake you up and fill you in on the plan in a little while.”

“Gonna throw a little PT in on top of that, _Dad_?” Dean grunts.

Taken aback by the jab, Sam fingers the throw and turns over what he just said in his head. Almost immediately, he realizes that Dean’s right. He’s only trying to look out for his brother, but he sounds like Dad at his most ‘need-to-know, do-what-I-say-and-don’t-ask-questions.’ It makes him wonder if maybe he’s been too hard on his father all these years.

Sam sighs and then says, “Sorry, man. I’m just worried about you.”

Dean’s eyes narrow and Sam realizes that admitting that was probably an even worse move than ordering his brother around like a foot soldier.

“Can you please just try it? For me?” he adds quickly, breaking out the hopeful, earnest expression again and adding a little bit of hangdog hurt for good measure. He’s worried that it’s a little too soon for that particular gambit to work again, but Dean rolls his eyes and flops back down.

“Oh for crying out loud,” he mutters, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face into a pillow. “Fine. Whatever. Just stop looking at me like that.” The words come out muffled by the pillow, but Sam’s been decoding his brother’s unintelligible, early-morning grumbles for years and has no problem understanding.

Smiling fondly, he spreads the throw over Dean like a blanket and then strips off his jacket and shirt, fingers tripping over each other in their haste. He studies his brother for a moment, wondering if Dean would feel safer between him and the wall, or if that would just make him feel trapped, and then decides that it doesn’t matter. He isn’t putting his back to the door: needs to be able to see what’s coming if Bela betrays them at the last minute and Vincent sends some of his people to take care of the problem. Normally, Sam would want to be _between_ Dean and any potential danger, but now that he has the ability to toss things around with his mind, that’s become less of a concern.

“Move over,” he says, nudging Dean with a foot.

The eyes Dean blinks up at him are already drooping with sleep, solidifying Sam’s certainty that this was the right decision. He climbs over his brother, almost falling twice as the pillows shift, and then works his way underneath the blanket. Dean’s watching him with a weird expression, and Sam finally pauses to ask, “What?”

“Thought we weren’t doing this here,” Dean answers.

Dismay hits Sam low in the stomach. He’s bothered by the fact that Dean automatically assumes that close physical contact has to end in sex, but even more disturbed by the expression on his brother’s face. Now that Dean isn’t trying to scare him off, it’s ludicrously easy to read. There’s wariness there, and reluctance, and fear, and resignation.

Dean seemed eager enough a few minutes ago, but now he’s looking at Sam like he’s just another horny client he has to roll over for.

Sam knows that it wasn’t all an act: he doesn’t think that it’s possible to lie mind-to-mind, and Dean definitely wanted him in the dream. No, Dean loves him. He’s just too screwed up to understand what he wants physically in that area, and far too hurt even to consider acting on what he’s feeling. Which means that he’s more damaged than Sam thought, and suddenly things are looking insurmountable again.

What if Dean’s never ready to be touched?

 _Then I’ll still know he loves me, and that’s enough,_ Sam tells himself. _It’s_ more _than enough._

“I just want to hold you,” he says. He feels like an idiot just saying it out loud, and he can feel himself blushing a little, but the unbearable tension leaves his brother’s face.

“Oh, give me a break,” Dean snorts, shoving at him. “No way am I cuddling when you won’t even put out.”

Sam’s chest gives a little pulse of pain: Dean doesn’t _want_ Sam to put out, and Sam doesn’t even think his brother is aware of it. He liked being held earlier, though, so Sam’s willing to chance pissing Dean off by pushing now.

“Turn over,” he says, ignoring Dean’s protest.

“What? No. I’m not fucking spooning with you—and who said I was gonna be the little spoon, anyway? I’m older.”

“You’re smaller,” Sam points out, pulling at Dean’s shoulder to get him turned the right way.

“Only cause you’re a freak,” Dean mutters, but he lets himself be rolled, and when Sam shuffles closer, Dean relaxes back into him.

Dean’s skin on his is like warm silk. Dean’s breathing moves his torso in rhythmic waves, and Sam finds himself breathing slower to match it. He can’t feel Dean’s heartbeat like this, he realizes, and shifts the arm draped over his brother’s chest so that his hand is splayed over Dean’s left breast. Dean’s pulse quickens as Sam accidentally skims over his nipple and then subsides again. Pressing his face into the nape of his brother’s neck, Sam takes a deep breath, breathing in the scent of _Dean_ , his brother warm and relaxed against him, and feels something deep inside of him loosen.

“I love you so fucking much,” he whispers again, in danger of being branded a little girl forever and not caring in the least.

“Freak,” Dean mumbles, but the word is filled with warm contentment, and Sam can hear the unspoken, _me too_. After a moment, Dean snuggles closer and lets out a tiny sigh that Sam pretends not to have heard.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two hours later, Sam is watching his brother while he sleeps. Dean drifted off almost immediately, and although he spent half an hour afterward tossing around—maybe not used to sleeping next to someone, maybe just dreams—Sam thinks that it’s been mostly peaceful. At some point, Dean flopped himself around so that he could nuzzle his face into the crook of Sam’s neck. One of his arms is twisted awkwardly underneath him in a position that’s going hurt when he wakes up and has to move. The other is positioned so that his hand is loosely closed on Sam’s hip.

Sam doesn’t think he could ever get tired of looking at Dean like this: relaxed and almost innocent. It’s only an illusion, but both the defenses he spent all of his life building and the pain they were meant to hide seem to have vanished. He easily looks five years younger, maybe as many as seven. If Sam looks hard enough, he can see glints of the boy who used to pour syrup on his pancakes until they were quite literally floating in it.

Dean moves unexpectedly—a quick jerk of his head—and Sam frowns. The sliver of face that he can see twists _(in fear, in pain)_ and Dean’s grip on his hip tightens. The tiny brush of air that hisses out from Dean’s lips carries a low, hurt moan. He jerks his head again—no—and this time Sam catches a moist shine on his brother’s cheek: tear tracks.

Sam doesn’t know if Dean is dreaming of blood or some softer horror and he doesn’t _want_ to know. He just wants it to stop.

“Dean,” he calls softly. “Hey, man, it’s okay. I’m right here. I gotcha.” He drags his hand down the line of Dean’s spine once before curling his hand underneath his brother’s body and pulling him even closer. Tilting his head gets him Dean’s temple and he presses a soft kiss there. “Right here,” he repeats.

Still lost in his dream, Dean takes a deep, hitching breath, and then stills as he catches the scent of Sam’s skin. “Sammy,” he mumbles. The word flows through his body, soothing out the bit of his face that Sam can see and making him a heavy, limp weight again. His hand twitches a little on Sam’s hip but doesn’t loosen.

Sam hesitates, torn between waking his brother or letting him sleep more. He doesn’t want to leave Dean in there if there’s any possibility that he’s still trapped inside of a nightmare, and Dean’s relaxed posture doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He may have just drifted deep enough to lose motor control.

Then Sam notices the dip at the corner of his brother’s mouth and realizes that Dean is smiling in his sleep. Reassured that his brother’s dreams are safe again, Sam relaxes as well. He’s going to have to wake Dean up in a little while anyway, but the rapidity with which his brother succumbed to sleep tells him that Dean needs all the rest he can get. Sam can’t imagine how his brother’s sleep has been these last six months: patchy and restless at best, probably.

All that he really wants to do right now is lie here with his brother in his arms and memorize this moment. He isn’t being morbid, although he’s aware that there’s no guarantee they’ll both be alive tomorrow. It’s just that, even if everything goes perfectly tonight, he knows he won’t be able to have this for a long time—years, maybe. Dean’s too damaged, and Sam wants too much: can’t trust himself to curl this close to his brother when they aren’t in a life and death situation without having a reaction that will break Dean further.

He can’t just stare at Dean all night, though, no matter how much he wants to. He needs to find out how close Gordon and the others are: needs to give himself enough time to go over the plan with his brother.

Sam eyes his jacket and wishes that he’d thought to put it a little closer. He doesn’t want to have to use his powers any more than is absolutely necessary. For a few moments, he hesitates, but in the end he isn’t willing to try gently disentangling himself from his brother in order to retrieve the comm. Not because he’s afraid of waking Dean, but because he isn’t ready to let go just yet.

Floating the jacket closer only takes a few seconds of effort, and Sam easily shuts down on the power before any dark impulses can flood him. Digging into his jacket pocket awkwardly with one hand, he pulls out both the earpiece and the microphone.

There’s a tiny power button on the earpiece that Sam has to use his nail to press, and an even smaller one on the microphone, but he manages both. Grimacing at the feel, he works the earpiece into his ear and then pushes down on the microphone’s transmit button.

“Status report,” he whispers.

“Hey, Sam,” Ash says. “Welcome to the party.”

“Ash,” Sam greets in turn. “Is Gordon there?”

He’s answered a moment later when Gordon’s voice comes back with, “We’re about four miles out. Should be in position in about thirty five minutes.”

Which means that Sam should really be waking Dean up now if they’re going to be ready in time. He brushes his knuckles against his brother’s cheek and then asks, “Anyone know where Bela is?”

“She radioed in a few hours ago to give us the go-ahead and we haven’t heard from her since,” Gordon answers.

“She told us she was going to keep Camargo busy until we got there,” a new voice supplies. Reagan, maybe. Or Creedy. Neither man spoke enough at their planning sessions for Sam to readily recognize his voice. “She’s probably with him.”

Sam was hoping for more than a ‘probably’, but he’ll take what he can get. “Okay. Let me know when you’re in position.”

Gordon doesn’t respond, but Reagan/Creedy says, “Will do,” in a tone that’s a little too cheerful for a man who’s about to die.

Sam waits for the guilt to come, but he has Dean in his arms, and in a few hours they’re both going to be driving away from here, and he can’t quite work up the proper remorse. Leaving the earpiece in his ear, he slips the microphone back into his jacket pocket. He’ll fasten it in place on the collar of his shirt once he’s dressed, but until then he doesn’t want to lose the tack-sized transmitter.

Then he gives his shoulder a little roll, nudging Dean.

“Dean? Time to wake up.”

“Mmph,” Dean mumbles. The hand on Sam’s hip slips over to the small of Sam’s back and tugs him closer for a second before relaxing.

“Dean, man,” Sam tries again.

“Five more minutes,” Dean slurs, nuzzling deeper into the crook of Sam’s neck.

Sam runs his hand through his brother’s hair and the noise Dean makes is languidly content. _Now_ he feels guilty. God, Sam would like nothing more than to let Dean stay like this a little longer, still mostly asleep and aware only that he’s with Sam, and that he feels safe and warm.

But if they don’t get going soon, neither of them will ever be able to have this again.

“Dean,” Sam says for a third time, more sharply.

Dean sucks in a harsh breath and jerks his head back. He blinks sleep-blurred eyes at Sam, frowning. “Sammy? What’re you doing in my bed?”

Sam just waits silently for his brother to reorient himself. Sees Dean figure out that they’re on the floor, his confusion, the dawning understanding and swiftly mounting horror.

And then Dean’s face just ... shuts down.

“Oh. Right.” He pulls away from Sam, crawling clumsily to his feet and then shaking his arm out with a curse.

Sam props himself up on his elbow and asks, “You feel better?”

“No,” Dean snaps. “Freaking arm fell asleep.” He sounds angry, but Sam knows that he’s just annoyed with himself for letting his guard down. Maybe a little annoyed with Sam for seeing him so defenseless and open in that moment between sleep and waking.

Sam gives Dean a few minutes to pull himself together, deliberately turning his back on his brother. He takes his time putting his shirt back on, and then bends to fish the microphone out of his jacket pocket. He leaves the jacket itself on the floor. Like the Protean charms, he won’t be needing it again.

When he turns around, Dean is padding noiselessly back into the room while he does up the last few buttons on his own shirt. He gives Sam a broad grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“So, Hilts. What’s the plan?”


	24. The Costs of Doing Business

Sam and Dean are perched on the edge of the couch: have been for the past ten minutes as they wait for Gordon’s go-ahead. Dean is playing with that wolf statue again, turning it over in his hands and staring at it like he expects the wolf to open its jaws and whisper the answers to all the questions he’s ever wanted to ask. He hasn’t looked at Sam since Sam finished laying the plan out for him, and Sam can’t tell if that’s because Dean is just nervous or if there’s something else bothering him.

Maybe the whole incest thing has finally registered and is making Dean uncomfortable. Or has Dean already been over that ground with himself and accepted it the way Sam has?

“Okay, spit it out,” Dean says abruptly, slanting a glance Sam’s way.

“Spit what out?”

“Whatever you’re angsting about.”

“I’m not _angsting_ , I was just wondering—” _If you were freaking out about us,_ is what Sam wants to say, but he chickens out at the last moment. “What’s with the statue?” he asks instead.

“This?” Dean sounds surprised, whether by the question or the realization that he’s holding it, Sam doesn’t know. He hefts the statue in one hand and his lips twist self-deprecatingly.

“Vincent gave it to me. For being a good boy.”

Suddenly Sam’s wishing he went with that incest question.

He shifts, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to say while simultaneously not thinking about all the ways Dean could have been a ‘good boy’ for Vincent. Then Gordon announces, “We’re in position.”

Concealing his relief at the interruption, Sam relays, “Gordon just radioed in: they’re ready.”

“Finally,” Dean snorts as he tosses the wolf statue back onto the coffee table with a thunk. It lands on its side and stares up at Sam balefully.

Sam shifts his gaze to the fireplace as he pushes the button on the microphone and says, “Okay, Ash. Take out the cameras and the infrared sensors.”

Ash’s response, when it comes, is garbled by the sound of chewing. “Going blind in three … two … one. Okay, you’re set.”

Sam waits for Gordon to respond and, after a minute of silence, pushes the button on his own microphone again. “Gordon? Do you copy?”

“Yeah, just a minute,” Gordon says, sounding distracted. In the background, Sam can hear two other voices raised in argument. He can’t make out what they’re talking about, but he’s pretty sure one of the voices belongs to Kubrick. Then the frequency is silent again.

“Well?” Dean asks, nudging Sam’s shoulder with his own.

Sam settles back against the couch and looks over at his brother. “They’re having some kind of argument.”

Dean’s eyebrows go up. “What the hell kind of operation are you running here, Sam? I thought you said you had everything worked out.”

“I do,” Sam insists, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what—”

“Kubrick’s gonna lead us in prayer,” Gordon’s voice announces suddenly, interrupting him. The man’s normally empty voice is filled with unconcealed scorn, and Sam lets out a surprised laugh.

“What?” Dean demands, looking cross.

“I think they were fighting about whether or not to pray,” Sam tells him, and then broadcasts, “Okay.”

Dean rolls his eyes and wonders aloud where Sam dug these morons up, but Sam isn’t paying any attention to his brother because Kubrick has started in with the Our Father. Suddenly, Sam feels even more anxious than before; his skin crawls with a strange, itching sensation just this side of painful. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

Sam is listening to a prayer he must have heard a million times before, and it’s like standing too close to a fire.

How long until it’ll be like standing _in_ a fire? How long before holy water burns and salt lines become impassable boundaries? How long before his descent becomes irreversible, if it isn’t already?

It’s been obvious for some time that his power is expanding exponentially, although Sam has never felt the danger this clearly. It’s like the old story about the Persian king and the chessboard. Only instead of rice, Sam is doubling power, and the darkness in him is keeping pace.

“Hey!”

Dean’s finger jabs into Sam’s side, jerking him out of his thoughts. Even though he isn’t consciously listening to the words anymore, Kubrick’s prayer is still wrecking havoc on Sam’s body, and he doesn’t trust his voice. So he just glances over at his brother inquisitively.

“You okay, man?” Dean asks.

Damn it. That requires an answer. Slowly, Sam unglues his tongue from the roof of his mouth and says, “I’m fine.”

“Cause you’re sweating,” Dean presses, leaning over to lay his hand across Sam’s forehead. Sam has a sense memory of Dean doing the same thing when they were both younger: checking for fevers whenever Sam was sick, making sure that he never faked an illness so he could play hooky. The memory helps, and Sam settles a little despite the buzzing in his skin.

“Just nervous,” he says, and in the earpiece Kubrick intones, “—forever and ever, Amen.”

 _Amen,_ Sam thinks. He doesn’t know if anyone is listening to him, but as he meets his brother’s concerned eyes, he adds, _Take care of him, okay? If I—if this goes wrong, just keep him safe. Give him some peace. He deserves that much from You._

“You feel a little hot,” Dean declares, frowning.

“I’m fine,” Sam tells him again. “Stop worrying.”

Dean still looks doubtful, but he starts to take his hand back. On impulse, Sam catches his brother's hand and brings it to his mouth. He presses a quick kiss to the inside of his brother’s wrist and then lets him go.

Dean laughs shakily as he puts his hand back on his thigh. “Dude, you’re totally the girl in this relationship.”

“I’m okay with that.” Sam grins at his brother and feels a warm rush of victory at the way Dean smiles and ducks his head: a little embarrassed, but mostly pleased. Verging on happy here, right now, in this one moment.

Guess that answers the freaking out question.

“Okay, we’re going in,” Gordon announces in his ear.

Sam doesn’t want to break the mood, but Gordon and his crew deserve to be acknowledged for the sacrifice they’re about to—albeit unwittingly—make.

“Roger that,” he says into the mike. “Good luck.”

“With God on our side, we don’t need luck,” Kubrick answers, and then there’s silence again. Sam waits to see if anyone else has anything to say and then decides that’s that last he’s going to hear from them until the shooting starts.

“They’re starting,” he says.

The slight smile on Dean’s face evaporates. “How long?”

“Ash is going to tell me when security radios in the first reports of an attack,” Sam answers. “We’ll wait a few more minutes to make sure that as many men as possible are on their way up, and then we’ll move.”

“Okay,” Dean says. He gets up and heads toward the other room and Sam drifts after him, unwilling to let his brother out of his sight this close to the starting line. “I want you to wait in the bedroom when I do this,” Dean tosses over his shoulder as he walks over to the dining room table.

Sam’s too keyed up to be anything more than mildly exasperated that Dean is, even now, trying to protect him. “I know how to handle myself, man.”

“I know that,” Dean agrees. He snags the wolf head choker off the tabletop and swings it in a short arc before catching it in his palm. “But they’re packing and you’re not, and I’m not carrying your heavy ass if you get yourself shot.”

Sam is actually armed with a weapon that’s far more effective than a gun, but he doesn’t want to have that discussion right now. If he has to use it, he’ll use it, and Dean can yell at him later.

“I’m not hiding in the bedroom while you take on ten armed men by yourself.”

Dean gives him a wry look and says, “What, you don’t think I can handle them?”

In Sam’s ear, Ash announces that he intercepted a transmission from one of the security checkpoints and Sam begins his internal countdown while saying, “I’ve seen you fight, man; I _know_ you can handle them. But I’m doing this with you.”

Dean opens his mouth to protest and Sam adds, “Besides, you’ll probably have them all dropped in about five seconds. I won’t have a chance to get shot.”

Dean stares at him for a long moment and then mutters, “I’m not taking a bullet for you.”

Sam resists the urge to smile at the bald-faced lie. Keeping his expression as neutral as possible, he nods. “Fair enough.”

The earpiece comes alive again, filled with the pop-pop-pop of semi-automatic gunfire and yelling voices. “Kubrick’s down!” someone shouts. All of a sudden, Sam’s not having any difficulty recognizing Creedy’s voice. “It’s a fucking shooting gallery up here! I don’t know how long we can hold!”

It’s easier than it probably should be for Sam to press the button on his microphone and say, “We’re almost there; just need a few more minutes.”

There’s no response, but he doesn’t expect one. In two minutes, when they realize that Sam isn’t coming—when they realize they’ve been screwed—he figures he’ll hear plenty. If anyone’s left alive by then, that is.

Glancing at his watch, Sam chews on his lip. When he looks up again, he finds Dean watching him with a frown.

“We’re almost there, huh?” Dean says.

Sam resists the urge to groan. He told Dean the plan: told him about Gordon’s men and the distraction they’d be providing. But he hadn’t included the fact that he’d lied to get them to do it. Or the fact that they were almost certainly outmanned and outgunned.

Sam knew that Dean would figure those omissions out eventually. He was just hoping it would take his brother a little longer to piece it together.

“It’s already done,” he says. “You want to yell at me, yell later.”

Dean keeps staring at him with this horrible expression of understanding on his face. He’s looking at Sam like he hasn’t ever seen him before: like he doesn’t know who he is and doesn’t want to.

Sam’s resolve slips under the weight of that gaze and he adds, “I had to get you back.”

Dean purses his lips together, looking almost pained, and shakes his head. “Not like this.”

Sensing that this is going to blow up in his face—and at a time when they need to be focused on other things—Sam skips straight to the response that he knows will hit Dean hardest. “You have a life expectancy of at least a thousand years.”

Dean snorts. “Oh, come on. You don’t really expect me to buy that crap.”

“It’s true,” Sam insists. “Bela has a copy of Tyr’s Bible. She’s read it, and she’s the one who told me. Bonding with an animal spirit slows down the aging process.”

Dean still looks uncertain, but there’s a hint of acceptance in the way his eyes widen.

“I wasn’t going to leave you to that,” Sam continues, pressing his advantage. “I can’t. I won’t.” Before Dean can say anything, he adds, “And we have to move now if we’re going at all. They’re not going to last much longer up there.”

Determination makes the planes of Dean’s face harsh. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.” Opening his hand, he lets the silver wolf’s head slide between his thumb and forefinger and then looks up at Sam. “You ready?”

What Sam means to say is ‘yes’, but what comes out it, “ _That’s_ your panic button?”

“You didn’t think I’d wear something this lame without a reason, did you?” Dean asks, and then slides his thumb across the wolf’s jaw, pushing it out of alignment. “Thirty seconds.” His eyes are hooded again: expressionless as he looks at Sam.

 _How do you know?_ Sam wants to ask, but he doesn’t have time and he already knows the answer anyway. Dean knows how long it takes the guards to respond because at some point he had to use the thing for real. The rush of fury that bursts through Sam in the wake of that understanding has him turning and sprinting to conceal himself to the left of the door.

Dean is perfectly capable of taking out all ten of the men who are about to burst into the suite without so much as raising his heart rate, but Sam wants one of them. He _needs_ one of them. Stretching his fingers with a slow roll of his knuckles, he leans against the wall and waits.

A few seconds later, the door slams open and a man charges inside with his gun out and the safety off. Sam has enough time to see that it isn’t Hank—which is a shame—and then he’s grabbing the man by the collar and hauling him sideways. He senses more than sees Dean dart past him and into the midst of his other ‘rescuers’. Distantly notes the sound of breaking bones and choked off shouts.

He shoves the sound of nine men dying to the back of his head and changes up his grip on the man he grabbed. Twisting the man’s right hand sharply, he makes him drop the gun and then slams his face into the wall. There’s a faint snap as the man’s nose breaks and he lets out a satisfying shout of pain. Sam can feel himself grinning as he twists the man’s hand again, getting another snap as his wrist breaks as well.

The dark power is surging inside of him, begging him to let it out for just a second— _smash him, break him, paste his blood and bone against the wall_ —but Sam has no trouble resisting it. He wants this kill himself. With his own hands. Slow.

Then the man is being yanked out of his grip and tossed away. Vincent’s guard sails through the air and slams headfirst into the fireplace, where the final snap of his neck breaking is hidden by the louder crunch of his body impacting hard enough to crack the stonework.

Breath coming in short, hard bursts, Sam glares at his brother. “He was mine,” he growls.

Dean looks coolly back at him and says, “No.”

“ _No?_ ” Sam repeats incredulously. They have more important things to be doing right now than arguing, but red rage is pounding in his head and he can’t help himself. Doesn’t really want to. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means ‘no’, Sam,” Dean shoots back. His voice is sharp but his face is still infuriatingly calm. “I’m not letting them do that to you. I’m not gonna let you kill people.”

“They’re not people, they’re—”

“They’re still human,” Dean says over him. “I’m not arguing with you about this. I get that you’re pissed off, man, but killing them isn’t going to make it better.”

“What, you can do it and I can’t?” Sam snaps.

“Yeah, that about sums it up.” Dean turns away—ultimatum delivered, conversation over—but rage is still heavy and metallic in Sam’s mouth.

Grabbing his brother’s shoulder, he says, “We’re not finished here, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t so much throw him against the wall as transport him there: one moment Sam is standing on his own two feet and the next he’s dangling off the ground with his shirt bunched in his brother’s hands and the wall at his back.

“You’re not a murderer, Sam,” Dean says. “You don’t kill people. You try it again and I’ll knock you out and carry you out of here on my own, you hear me?”

Sam senses that Dean means it, but he’s too angry to give up just yet. “You’re a fucking hypocrite,” he shouts. “You just—” The rest of his words are cut off as Dean slams him back. It’s probably a gentle push for Dean, but Sam knocks his head hard enough to be slightly dazed.

“I’m already damned, you asshole,” Dean snarls. “I’ve killed so many people over the last six months that a few more don’t matter, but you are _not_ going down that path with me. You’re not.”

Dean’s a few seconds away from crying, Sam realizes, and the realization brings him back to his senses with a disorienting snap. It isn’t that he isn’t angry anymore, or that he agrees with his brother—he’s already responsible for the deaths of four men, after all—but he understands that this is something Dean doesn’t want to see in him. He doesn’t want his little brother tainted.

Between Gordon and his friends and the demonic power inside of him, Sam’s soul is already well past grey and verging on black, but Dean doesn’t know that. He doesn’t need to know.

“Okay,” Sam rasps. “Okay, I’m sorry, I won’t.”

“You promise me!” Dean insists, shaking him again.

“I promise,” Sam responds obediently. After all, it isn’t like a lie is going to tip the balance in comparison with everything else.

Dean searches his face intently, looking for any hint of insincerity. Sam’s control over his own expression must have gotten better because after a moment Dean nods and lowers him back to the ground. He looks slightly embarrassed, probably from the ferocity of his response, and he can’t meet Sam’s eyes as he smoothes down the collar of his shirt.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I don’t—I don’t want you to do that for me. It’s not worth it.”

Sam’s anger swells for a moment—Dean _is_ worth it, damn it: he’s worth _everything_ —and then subsides into a kind of weary resignation. He grabs the back of his brother’s neck and drags him in so that their foreheads are resting against each other. Breathes in the warm exhalation of Dean’s breath and reminds himself that he’s going to fix this: he’s going to fix _Dean_.

It’s at that moment that Gordon finally growls into Sam’s earpiece, “You dirty, double-crossing son of a whore.”

Sam’s eyes fly open and he finds Dean looking back at him with similar surprise. He must be close enough for his sharpened hearing to pick up Gordon’s voice through the earpiece.

There’s the sound of a gun going off—too close to be anything but Gordon himself firing—and Dean flinches.

“One day Dean’s gonna find out what you are,” Gordon continues, “and then he’s gonna put you down like a rabid dog.”

Sam goes cold as he wonders if Gordon _knows_ or if he’s just talking about the fact that Sam sent him and the others in to die. There's no way of knowing, and Sam can’t ask for clarification because Gordon is still holding his end of the radio open. He can hear the man panting and the faint, rapid sound of shooting. Another series of echoing blasts as Gordon returns fire.

Then, surprisingly: “Everyone else is dead, and I’m gut shot, so if you have some other plan to get Dean out of here, you’d better use it fast.” Gordon pauses, and his breath is coming even more laboriously now: it sounds eerily like an obscene phone call. “I hope you rot in hell, Winchester.”

Sam stands there, frozen by the sudden silence in his ear, and stares into his brother’s eyes. Dean stares back, waiting. After a few seconds, Sam swallows thickly. His fingers feel numb as he reaches up to activate his microphone.

“Status report,” he says shakily. When he doesn’t get a response, he clears his throat and tries again, more firmly this time. “Ash, I need a status report.”

“They—they’re dead.” Ash sounds more shaken than Sam feels. He hangs out with hunters, so he must know that death is a fact of life, but Sam is willing to bet that this is the first time Ash has ever had any direct contact with it. “All of them, they’re—wait, Gordon’s still moving.”

He must be tapping into the security camera feed.

“He’s pulling something out of his pocket,” Ash narrates. “I can’t quite make it—Jesus Christ, he just—he just blew the entire corridor. He’s dead, they’re all dead, oh shit, oh fuck.”

“Take your finger off the fucking mike,” Dean mutters, shutting his eyes.

A second later, as if he somehow heard Dean’s order, Ash’s voice cuts off. Without looking, Dean reaches up and grabs Sam’s collar, bending the microphone toward his mouth.

“You gotta pull it together, okay?” he says, and it’s Dad’s voice. Calm and no-nonsense and authoritative. “Just take a deep breath and focus.”

It isn’t meant for Sam, but he finds himself calming instinctively anyway.

“D-Dean?” Ash stutters.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“It’s—” Ash takes a shaky breath and when he speaks again he sounds more settled. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

Dean doesn’t bother trying to keep his surprised pleasure at hearing that off his face, but his voice is neutral when he says, “Yeah, well, if you wanna keep hearing it you’ve gotta tell us what’s going on up there.”

“Okay. Just—gimme a minute.” Ash sounds even more certain now: still stressed, but with a purpose—or maybe it’s just the fact that Dean is taking charge—he’s less freaked out. In a few seconds his voice is back, telling them, “Camargo’s locking down the building. Complete security shut down—sending Security Teams Beta through Lambda to look for any more intruders. Alpha’s orders are to secure the place floor by floor, starting from the top and working down.”

Dean releases Sam’s collar and steps back, shoulders tense. “His guys are good. We’ve gotta move fast.”

Squaring his jaw, Sam nods and steps out into the hallway. The nine guards that Dean took out lie scattered on the ground in surprisingly peaceful poses. If, that is, you ignore the fact that all of their necks are broken—some of their heads are twisted far enough around that they look like they were put on backwards.

It’s an incredibly efficient slaughter, and Sam can’t help but think that if the United States military ever found out about Dean they’d probably be even more eager to get their hands on him than Vincent was. Fuck, maybe they already know about him: Vincent isn’t exactly keeping him a secret.

“I made it quick,” Dean says defensively, misinterpreting Sam’s concerned expression.

“I know you did,” Sam answers, wondering if he can convince Dean to head to Alaska for a few decades.

That’s a problem for another day, though, so he pushes it out of his head and then crouches next to the nearest body. He strips the dead man of his gun and the magazine carrier attached to his belt and then moves on to the next corpse and does the same. He doesn’t want to use the telekinesis in front of Dean unless he has to.

When he straightens from outfitting himself, Dean is standing over one of his kills. He’s holding a Beretta in his hands and turning it over with slow, careful movements. His brows are drawn together, and he’s frowning. After a moment, he seems to feel Sam’s eyes on him and looks up.

“I remember this,” Dean says, ghosting his thumb over the barrel.

“Dean,” Sam starts. He isn’t sure what he’s going to say, though, and he’s glad when his brother cuts him off with a curt shake of his head.

“Later,” Dean tells him, flipping the safety on and tucking the Beretta into the waistband of his pants.

Sam has a feeling that all of these ‘laters’ they’re racking up are going come around and bite them in the ass at some point, but it isn’t like they have a choice. “You know how to get to the elevator?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and sets off down the hallway at a brisk pace. He doesn’t seem to be taking any particular care to watch for approaching guards, but Sam supposes that with Dean’s sense of smell, they’ll know about any potential problems well in advance. Just in case, though, he keeps his own gun out and the safety off.

He hopes like hell that he’ll get a chance to use it.


	25. The Good Doctor

Vincent’s secure lockdown includes shutting off power to the elevators, but it isn’t a problem for Ash to get the one they want moving again, and only a few minutes after Dean hit his panic button, they’re stepping out of the car onto the ninth floor.

The long hallway in front of them has glaring white walls and a pale ocher tiled floor. Men and women in white scrubs hurry along the corridor, calling orders and questions and not so much as glancing at either of them.

For a few seconds, Sam watches the ordered chaos in confusion. Then he realizes that Gordon and the others must have injured or killed their fair share of Vincent’s men before they were killed. It’s only logical that Vincent would use his own private hospital to take care of the injured. No one on the medical staff can go anywhere as long as the building is locked down, but they can make sure that they’re ready for incoming trauma. From the snatches of conversation that Sam overhears as they move forward, that’s exactly what everyone is doing.

It’s a woman who catches sight of them first: brown hair pulled back into a tight bun and arms full of bandages. Her eyes skitter over Sam’s gun, hesitate, and then dismiss it. It’s a fairly fucked up reaction to an armed man storming into what’s essentially a hospital, but this place being what it is, Sam guesses that they see a lot of this kind of thing.

Then the woman—girl, really—looks at Dean and freezes. Her eyes widen and her mouth trembles.

Dean smirks like a shark that has just scented blood in the water and angles his path toward her without missing a step. When he speaks, it’s with that low, honeyed rumble he always uses when picking up women in bars.

“Hey, sweetheart. What time do you get off?”

“F-F—” she stammers, and then flinches as Dean leans against the wall right next to her. He’s close enough to touch: the lean of his body an open invitation that Sam has seen countless women jump at. All that Sam sees in this girl’s eyes, though, is terror.

 _Leave her alone,_ Sam thinks, but he doesn’t say anything. She isn’t an innocent, not if she’s worked here long enough to dismiss a gun. And it isn’t like Dean is actually going to hurt her.

Dean leans even closer to sniff her hair, and the crotch of her scrubs goes dark with urine. Chuckling, Dean runs his tongue across his lips.

“You smell good enough to eat,” he growls, and reaches out to trail his fingertips across her cheek.

It’s the touch that does it. The girl’s throat unlocks and she’s screaming suddenly, loud and shrill in the hallway. “Fenrir! Oh God, Fenrir! Code Black! Fenrir!”

All motion in the hall stops as eyes turn toward her. The sudden burst of fear is like an icy wind over Sam’s skin: almost fifty people going numb and cold with the certainty of their own bloody deaths at the same moment. Dean grabs the girl’s arm and spins her, pulling her back against his chest. His hand clamps down over her mouth to dampen her shouts.

“Shhh,” he whispers in her ear and her shrieks trail off to weak, helpless sobs.

In the faces of the other members of Vincent’s medical staff, Sam reads a flicker of relief that disgusts him. He can practically hear their thoughts: _good, take her, fuck her, kill her, whatever; just don’t hurt me_. They don’t run, though: he has to give them that much. Although they may be staying still because they’re afraid of catching Dean’s attention. It’s difficult to say.

Dean grins at the hallway and announces, “I’m looking for Dr. Thorsen. Tell me where he is and I won’t paint the walls red.”

“Mmphhmp,” the girl he’s holding says immediately.

He lifts his hand and ducks his head down beside hers. “What was that, honey?”

“O-office,” she splutters. “H-he’s in h-his o-office.”

Dean laughs: a low, intimate sound. “Like I know where that is,” he points out. His voice is teasing, almost playful, and he nudges her cheek with his nose.

“Ohgod,” she moans. What little blood was left in her face drains, leaving her chalk-white and trembling.

“Directions,” Dean breathes, lips catching against her skin.

The girl presses her eyes closed and makes a visible effort to pull herself together. As Dean lowers his head to sniff at the sensitive join of her neck and shoulder, she blurts, “S-second right, then your thir-third l-left. F-first d-door on the left.”

“’Preciate it,” Dean tells her. He’s all business again as he lets her go.

Now that Dean isn’t holding her up, the girl slumps down in a huddle on the floor. Pulling her knees to her chest, she lowers her head and sobs softly. The look Dean tosses Sam is distant: empty.

“Come on.”

Sam follows wordlessly in his brother’s wake, keeping a wary eye on Vincent’s medics. The men and women seem to have been completely cowed by Dean’s performance and shrink back against the walls as they pass. Still, there’s no guarantee that someone won’t decide to try and be a hero at the last moment. Sam has learned the hard way that the more frightened and desperate a person is, the more dangerous they get.

A few feet from the first turn, Dean pauses in front of a heavyset man with a goatee. He squints at the man and then says, “You worked on my leg.”

Goatee makes a low moan and his eyes roll back in his head. Dean catches the man before he can fall and holds him upright with one hand while slapping his face lightly with the other.

Sam casts an anxious look over his shoulder where the rest of the staff is staring at them with the shiny, fearful eyes of mice. “We don’t have time for this,” he murmurs out of the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, we do,” Dean answers as he gives Goatee another slap.

Goatee moans as he comes back to himself. When he lifts his groggy eyes and finds Dean looking down at him, he looks like he wants to faint again. His bottom lip quivers like he’s on the verge of crying.

“Morning, sunshine,” Dean says.

Goatee’s mouth drops open and words spill out in a terrified babble. “I did my best—not responsible—please don’t hurt me, please—you said you wouldn’t—”

“Shut up,” Dean says mildly, and Goatee closes his mouth so quickly and tightly that it looks painful. “I just wanted to thank you for the anesthetic. Not everyone was so thoughtful.”

Twitching his lips sourly, Dean flicks his eyes down the hallway. A strange ripple passes through the men and women pressed up against the walls as they collectively shift away from that look.

“I—you—you’re welcome?” Goatee offers, and then snaps his mouth shut again as Dean’s attention is drawn back to him.

“Word of advice,” Dean says as he uncurls his fingers from the front of the man’s scrubs. “Get a new job. I know the pay here is good, but it isn’t worth dying over. And sooner or later, that’s all you’re gonna get.”

Dean turns his head again as he finishes speaking, turning his words into a threat leveled at the entire hallway. His eyes have gone all-over gold, and Sam feels the wolf’s power as a prickling presence on his skin. He bites the inside of his cheek, using that small pain to keep his own power from flaring up in response while he wonders if his brother is deliberately letting the wolf show in his eyes or if he’s just that upset.

He doesn’t ask, though: just follows Dean around the corner into a second hallway that appears to be completely empty at first. After a few feet, Sam realizes that there are people peering out at them from the windows set into the doors and his steps slow. He thumbs the safety off the gun in his hand and starts to lift it.

“They won’t come out,” Dean announces. “Someone calls Code Black and they lock themselves in until there’s a recall over the intercom.”

Sam glances over at his brother and is relieved to see that Dean’s irises are green again. There are tiny lines of tension around the corners of his eyes, though, and Sam can read a mixture of shame and disgust in the way Dean’s twisting his mouth.

“Dean,” Sam starts just as Dean says, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Sam isn’t sure exactly what part of the scene in the other hallway his brother is talking about, so he sticks with the vague but true, “You’re angry. It’s a normal reaction.”

“Is that what I am? Angry?”

Sam can tell from the timbre of Dean’s voice that it isn’t a rhetorical question, but he doesn’t actually have an answer so he doesn’t respond.

After a moment, Dean says, “She wasn’t even that bad. I mean, she never—some of the nurses are real bitches, but she was just—she just works here.”

“No one ‘just’ works here,” Sam tells him.

“She pissed herself,” Dean mutters as he turns down the left-hand hallway. “I barely touched her and she pissed herself.” The disgust is thicker in his voice, and all of it directed at himself where it doesn’t belong.

“Good,” Sam says.

Dean stops at that and looks over at him with surprise. “Good?” he echoes.

Sam meets his brother’s gaze and says, “They’ve been treating you like an animal for months. They deserve to be frightened. Hell, they deserve more than that!”

“You can’t kill everyone who pisses you off,” Dean returns, starting forward again. He sounds uncertain of it, though: more like he’s trying to convince himself than Sam. Something about the way he’s clenching his jaw is off too, and Sam finds himself picking over his brother’s actions in his mind.

The more he thinks about it, the more it seems as though Dean knew exactly what he was doing back there. The more it feels like Dean was trying to blow off some steam so that he won’t completely lose it now. Before Sam can ask what’s going on, though, Dean comes to a stop and jerks his head at the closed door to their left. A gold plaque in the center of the wood reads _Riley Thorsen, MD_.

The man’s first name sounds familiar, and Sam belatedly places it from his vision of Dean’s first meeting with Vincent. This is the man who performed Dean’s initial checkup, and who must have overseen his subsequent medical treatment.

Beside him, Dean is all but quivering, and his face too closed off for Sam to tell if it’s from fear or anger or just plain nerves. The pit in his stomach deepens, but it isn’t like they have the time to toss the entire floor looking for the Gleipnir. And according to Dean, Dr. Thorsen is the only one who knows where the drug is kept, so there isn’t really any point in stalling.

Nodding to his brother, Sam lifts his gun to eye level and focuses it on the door. Dean delivers a single punishing kick to the wood and the entire thing comes off the hinges. Splinters spray out and pepper their shirts as the door flies across the room beyond to slam into the far wall.

“Christ!” comes a hoarse shout of alarm, and then Dean is darting inside the room.

Sam follows immediately, but Dean already has the doctor by his coat by the time he crosses the threshold. Thorsen is a middle-aged man with jet black, greasy hair and bottle cap glasses. He looks like a wiry pencil pusher—looks harmless—but Dean’s expression has cracked open again and the sickening mix of fury and fear Sam sees there tells him that the man isn’t as innocent as he looks.

“A wood door?” Dean says. “Seriously?”

“Put me down this instant!” Thorsen snaps. He’s sweating and pale, so he must not be completely oblivious to the danger he’s in, but his grip on reality has to be at least a little shaky if he’s still trying to order Dean around.

“I've been waiting a long time to get you alone,” Dean says, and then slams Thorsen down onto his desk. The man flails his arms, scattering paper and knocking over his lamp with a hollow, metallic bang.

“If you stop this nonsense right now and go back to your room, Mr. Camargo may still show lenience.” He still sounds like he thinks that Dean’s going to listen to him, and Sam has to wonder how such a stupid man got his M.D.—or maybe Thorsen is just that arrogant.

Dean gives Thorson a sickly sweet smile that looks out of place below the wrath burning in his eyes and says, “Vinnie can shove his lenience up his ass, doc. I decided to cut my stay short.”

“You can’t go out there without your …” Thorsen trails off as comprehension dawns. “You want the Gleipnir.”

“Well, give the man a Kewpie doll!” Dean crows. His expression doesn’t change perceptibly, but Sam would swear that the temperature in the room just went down about twenty degrees and the darkness inside of him stirs nervously. When Sam looks for it, there’s a flicker of gold in his brother’s eyes.

“Now, where is it?”

Thorsen swallows, and for a second Sam thinks that he’s going to be smart and answer the question. Then he rallies and juts his chin out. “You can do whatever you want: I’m not going to tell you.”

Sam expects the man’s refusal to cooperate to piss Dean off even more, but his brother’s smile just widens. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he admits, and then yanks Thorsen back off the desk.

“Where’re you going?” Sam asks as his brother pushes past him with Thorsen in tow.

“Walk down memory lane,” Dean tosses over his shoulder. He isn’t really looking at Sam right now, and Sam’s grateful for it. He’s afraid that if Dean turns those half-wild eyes on him he won’t be able to stop himself from grabbing hold of the power.

Thorsen stumbles and Dean yanks harder on the man’s arm, literally dragging Thorsen for several feet before he gets his feet under him again. Dean walks with a purpose, glancing into the rooms at either side as he goes, and it’s all Sam can do to keep up with his brother.

Finally, Dean draws up outside a room and tries the handle. When it doesn’t budge, Thorsen lets out a relieved exhale.

“We’re in lockdown,” he says. “And mine was the only wooden door on this level. The best thing that you and your friend can do is—”

“Have Ash open the door,” Dean says, still not looking at Sam.

Sam knows that the right answer is ‘no’, followed by ‘what the fuck are you planning on doing?’, but time is slipping through their fingers. How many floors away is Security Team Alpha now? Five? Four? _Three?_ And then, even after Dean convinces Thorsen to tell them where the Gleipnir is, they still have to get it and get back to the elevator.

Reluctantly, Sam pushes the button on the mike and asks, “You have our location?”

“Big ten-four on that one, Sam,” Ash responds.

Sam hesitates for only a second more before saying, “I need you to open the door.”

“No problem.”

An audible click echoes through the hallway and this time, when Dean reaches out to open the door, the handle turns easily. He tosses Thorsen inside with a casual motion and then, with his eyes locked on the room in front of them, he orders, “Stay here, Sam.”

If Dean thinks Sam is letting him out of his sight ever again—especially when he’s behaving so erratically—then he’s delusional. Sam doesn’t have to argue his way into the room, though: Dean is focused enough on Thorsen that he doesn’t bother to shut the door behind him. Hell, Sam isn’t sure that his brother is really aware he’s there anymore.

The room looks almost exactly like every doctor’s office that Sam has ever seen the inside of. There’s an examination table with paper sheeting over it, and a swiveling chair, and a white counter with cabinets above and below. A sink is set into one end of the counter, and a red trashcan with a yellow biohazard decal sits against the far wall.

Then again, Sam has never seen a doctor’s office where the patient needed to be strapped down for a checkup.

He edges far enough into the room that he won’t be cut in half if the door shuts abruptly for some reason and then stops. Confused and wary, he watches his brother catch hold of Thorsen again—the man’s attempts to evade Dean in the small space would be comical in another time and place—and throw him onto the examination table on his back.

Thorsen is putting up a struggle, shouting about punishment and telling Dean that if he doesn’t stop right now the Tatro incident is going to seem like a picnic. Dean ignores him, methodically shoving the man’s hands into the thick, leather restraints and jerking them tight. He considers Thorsen’s feet for a moment and then shrugs, dismissing the need to completely immobilize him.

“So here’s the thing, doc,” Dean says finally, hooking the rolling chair with his ankle and dragging it over so that he can sit down. “We’ve probably got about ten minutes before security gets here. That’s not a whole lot of time, but I’m gonna do my best. Anytime you want to stop, you can just tell me where the Gleipnir’s at and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Now that he’s strapped down on one of his own examination tables, Thorsen finally seems to be figuring out that he’s in trouble. He licks his lips and then asks, “Wh-what are you going to—”

“I’m hurt that you don’t remember,” Dean says, his voice dripping with false sincerity. “Really, I think I might cry.” He rolls over to the counter and pulls open one of the drawers. Humming softly to himself, he reaches inside and pulls out a scalpel.

Sweat is pouring off of Thorsen now, and his eyes are wide: panicked. “Wait!” he shouts, jerking against the leather straps. “Vincent will punish you, he’ll—”

Dean draws the scalpel across Thorsen’s cheek in a blurred motion and the man’s words cut off into a shrill scream.

“Let’s see how long it takes _you_ to heal,” Dean growls. Shifting his grip on the scalpel, he drags it slowly down the side of Thorsen’s neck—not cutting yet, but letting him feel the pressure of the blade. “How about we cut off a few chunks of skin and see how long it takes them to grow back?”

Thorsen draws in a breath to scream again and Dean grips the man’s throat with his left hand tightly enough to cut off both his voice and his air.

“Or how about this? I don’t have a tank of water, but this’ll work too, right? We’ll see how long you can learn to go without breathing before you pass out—and don’t worry about the pain, doc; it’s all in the name of _profit_ , so that makes it okay, remember?”

The man’s face is shooting past red and into purple, and he’s clawing desperately at Dean’s arm. Sam should be telling his brother to stop. He should be reminding him of what he said outside Thorsen’s office. But Dean’s words are drawing a pretty clear outline in Sam’s mind of what this man did to his brother, and he’s too horrified to do anything.

He thought he had the whole picture: thought that the killing and the whoring were bad enough. Now he has to add torture to the list, and he wonders if he’s ever going to fully understand what Dean went through these last six months. If he’s ever going to come _close_ to comprehending.

Dean releases Thorsen’s throat suddenly and the man gasps in deep, desperate breaths. While he’s still recovering, Dean drives the scalpel into Thorsen’s shoulder, using his strength to push the metal—including three quarters of the dull handle—into the man’s flesh.

Thorsen shrieks: a wordless cry of agony that descends into sobbing. Dean leans close with a feigned expression of sympathy.

“What’s that? You want something for the pain? Gee, I’m sorry, doc, but anesthetics might have an adverse affect on your performance. Besides, this is good practice, right?” He twists the scalpel violently and Thorsen cries out again. “Gotta learn to ignore the pain so you can give the people a show. Gotta learn to block it out so you can ‘perform’ after a few rounds in the cage—”

Dean twists the scalpel again and Thorsen’s scream is even louder than it was before. The noise frees Sam from his shocked paralysis and he darts forward, grabbing his brother’s wrist and pulling him back. Dean’s face is wild as he turns, and Sam is certain that Dean is going to attack him for a moment because there’s nothing but pain and anger in his brother’s golden eyes. He fumbles for the power, already knowing that he’s going to be too slow, and then Dean whirls, takes the few steps over to the sink and throws up noisily.

Sam stands there shivering, stunned by how close he came to lashing out at his brother in a misguided attempt to protect himself. Most of him wants to go to Dean and make sure that he’s okay, but he doesn’t know if either of them is calm enough for that yet. Besides, Thorsen is watching through a haze of pain and they’re running out of time.

After a few more precious seconds of hesitation, Sam approaches the doctor instead. He leans both hands on the edge of the table where the man is lying. The straps trapping Thorsen's wrists are superfluous at this point: now that he’s closer, Sam can tell that Dean thrust the scalpel deep enough to pin the man's shoulder to the table.

“Oh thank God,” Thorsen whispers, looking up at Sam gratefully. “Take it out, take it out!”

After a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that Dean isn’t paying attention, Sam clamps one hand over Thorsen’s mouth and twists the scalpel with the other. The man’s shout is muffled, and Dean is rinsing his mouth out with water right now, so Sam’s pretty sure his brother didn’t hear it.

Leaning close enough to smell Thorsen’s sour fear, Sam whispers, “I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth now, and you’re gonna tell me where the drug my brother needs is, or I’ll send him out of the room and do what I’ve been wanting to do to one of you fucks for six months. You won’t die, doctor, but you won’t ever be able to work again, and I will give you the most memorable face in the world.”

Then he hears the faucet shut off from behind him and straightens, lifting his hand from Thorsen’s mouth.

“Alcove across from my office,” the man blurts immediately. “B-behind the painting on the wall. In the safe.”

Sam gives Thorsen a friendly, ‘there, I knew you could be reasonable’ smile, and prods, “Combination.”

“3-18-9.”

He turns his back on the man without any further hesitation, going to splay his hand against the small of his brother’s back. Dean’s eyes are wide as he stares down into the sink; his hands are trembling.

“I shouldn’t have,” he breathes. “I shouldn’t— ” He shudders. “I want to rip him apart. I want to hurt him.”

“I know,” Sam says.

He doesn’t have a problem with hurting Thorsen, not after the things Dean said. If they had time, in fact, he’d want to make good on his threat right now, cooperation or not. He just doesn’t want Dean to be the one to do it. Dean isn’t like Sam—he still has a conscience: is still essentially a good person—and he’d hate himself for it later.

“That’s enough, though,” Sam adds. “We got what we need.”

Dean draws in a shuddering breath and then nods. His eyes flick over to Thorsen and then away again. “We should—we should go.”

“Dean?”

Dean looks at Sam, questioning. His eyes are blessedly green.

“We can’t leave him here. He could hurt someone else.” It’s a clumsy manipulation at best, and if Dean were in a better state of mind he’d see through it in a heartbeat, but right now he just nods.

“Yeah.”

Two quick gunshots later, all Sam feels is satisfaction that his brother will sleep easier tonight. Killing the monsters that haunt your dreams tends to help with that. In fact, Dean already looks more settled as they head back the way they came. He keeps absently reaching back to feel the gun he shot Thorsen with, but his eyes are clear: the insane rage not just held at bay but completely expunged.

The place Thorsen told them about is more makeshift operating room than alcove. It’s almost eight feet deep, and there’s a sink along one wall and a large drain set in the center of the floor. A gurney lies against the far wall, and there’s a tray with operating instruments set out: bottles of disinfectant soap and boxes of gloves on the small counter by the sink. Sam guesses that the medical staff was planning on using this area once Vincent started shipping the injured down. He gives the disorder a cursory look and then focuses on the painting.

It’s one of Monet’s water lilies: Sam isn’t familiar enough with Impressionists to know which one. Whoever put it up here probably meant it to be soothing, as if Vincent’s gladiators are going to notice a painting on the wall when they’re being stitched back together.

Sam steps up in front of the painting and lifts it down, revealing the grey face of the safe beneath. Dean is at his shoulder, radiating nerves, and Sam is suddenly certain that Thorsen gave them the wrong combination, they killed him too soon, this is it. Then he punches 3-18-9 into the keypad and the safe swings open.

There are two metal cases inside. Sam pulls out both cases and lays them on top of the gurney to their left. When Sam snaps the clasps on the first case, he finds depressions for syringes inside: thirty of them. All but five of the depressions are filled with syringes bearing the same, eerily glowing blue liquid he saw in his vision.

“That’s it,” Dean breathes, and brushes his fingertips across one of the glass barrels.

Sam closes the case again carefully and moves on to the second. This one contains depressions as well, but the syringes they hold are red. Dean draws back immediately, his breath coming quicker and his pupils dilating.

“Put it back,” he says harshly.

Sam frowns down at the case. Thirty syringes filled with Ragnarök. It doesn’t make sense: not if Vincent was telling the truth when he said that the drug was supposed to meld Dean and the wolf together. No reason to need it more than once for that.

“Sometimes it’s red,” he murmurs, echoing his brother’s earlier gesture as he trails one fingertip against the smooth glass of a syringe.

“Sam,” Dean snaps.

“If this does what Vincent claims, then why does he have so much of it?” Sam asks. “He only needed to use it once.”

Dean fidgets: a sharp, nervous motion. “How the fuck should I know? Put it back and let’s go.”

But Sam continues to hesitate. Geri’s words reoccur to him: _‘Am alone. Everything hurts. Everything is angry. Red. Want to rendbitetear. Can’t think. Like bees under skin, in head. Smells like burning earth.’_ Sam has been assuming that was the wolf’s impression of Dean’s fights in the cage, but now he’s not so sure.

“Everything is blue, but sometimes it’s red,” he says.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but we need to move. Now. Damn it, Sam, we’ve already wasted—” Dean’s voice cuts off abruptly and then, soft and vehement, he says, “Oh _fuck_.”

Sam grunts as Dean hauls him around and grabs for the mike. Yanking Sam’s head down so that he’ll be close enough to hear a response, Dean says, “Ash, we’re in trouble. Are there any security measures around here? Something strong?”

“You’re standing in one,” Ash tells them. “The whole floor’s built to compartmentalize in case of fire. I can activate the firewall and close you off from the rest of the floor.”

“Do it,” Dean orders. “Now.”

“What—Dean, what the hell is going on?” Sam demands.

He jumps as a thick sheet of some clear material slams down across the front of the alcove, blocking them in. There's no other way out, Sam notes, which makes this a really stupid place for them to be standing right now. He reaches for the mike to ask Ash if he can open the door again and then someone steps into view outside the flame retardant wall. Dean is trembling next to him, and Sam abandons the microphone to wrap his hand around his brother’s arm.

“Well, well, well,” Hank drawls, grinning at them. “Aren’t you just as snug as two Winchesters in a fish bowl?”


	26. Halfbreeds and Sewers

“Wow,” Sam says after a moment. “That was … incredibly lame.”

“Sam, _shut up_ ,” Dean hisses, and then presses the button on the microphone. “Any other way out of here?”

“There’s a drain below you. I can give you directions from there.”

Sam glances down, surprised, and Ash is right. The grating is going to be a bitch to pull up, but the drain is easily big enough to fit both of them. Maybe activating the firewall wasn’t such a dumb idea after all.

“Step back,” Dean says, squatting. “I think I can get this.”

On the other side of the firewall, Hank’s smile fades into a dismayed squint. “You won’t be able to get out that way,” he tries. “Why don’t you just give up and come on back with me, huh, Dean? Make nice enough and I won’t hurt your brother. Much.”

Dean’s face tightens with fear as he curls his fingers in the grating, which Sam doesn’t understand. He fought Hank and the man is all bluff. He’s probably armed, but then again so are they. Hell, just walking around with Dean is sort of like packing a rocket launcher.

“Kinda ironic, isn’t it, Sammy?” Hank notes. “You really _are_ a pansy college boy.”

Dean pulls on the grating and it shifts slightly before falling back into place with a clang. He swears under his breath and Hank smirks at Sam.

“How about you come out here? We’ll finish what we started the other day.”

 _Man_ , is Sam tempted. Everything else aside, Hank is an asshole. Add to that the fact that he hurt Dean—kicked him when he was chained to a wall, shoved a knife underneath his fingernail, _enjoyed_ it—and Sam is itching to accommodate him. He moves closer to the firewall without really thinking about it and Dean catches him by the ankle.

“Sam, _don’t_ ,” he hisses.

“Why not?” Sam asks, not bothering to keep his voice down. Hank is grinning at him broadly through the clear material of the firewall and flexing his muscles. “I kicked his ass before. It’ll only take a few minutes to do it again.”

Dean’s grip tightens, and his fingernails dig into Sam’s shin. “You kicked his ass because he let you,” he says.

It should be ludicrous, but all that Sam can think about is Dean’s face after the fight. Dean standing not five feet from Vincent and radiating badly concealed concern in Sam’s direction, too worried to dissemble.

“So _you_ kick his ass and we’ll get out of here,” he says.

The slight motion of Dean shaking his head finally makes him look down at his brother. Dean’s face is pleading as he looks up, and fearful, and Sam realizes that Dean hasn’t looked directly at Hank once since the man stepped into view.

“I can’t,” Dean confesses. “I can’t fight him and protect you at the same time. He’ll kill you.”

“Only a little,” Hank laughs, drawing Sam’s attention back over to him.

The man’s eyes are gleaming yellow.

“You’re a berserker,” Sam blurts, and immediately knows that can’t be the entire story. Dean could handle one of Vincent’s berserkers with one hand behind his back: Sam knows that much from Vincent’s demonstration.

“Not quite, college boy,” Hank says. This time when he smiles, his teeth are too sharp. He rests one hand on the firewall and his nails and thick and curving. More like claws than nails.

“He’s a hybrid,” Dean says, pulling at the grating again. It moves this time, coming down slightly off center, and he lets out a sigh of relief. “I’ve got it,” he adds, pushing the grating further off of the drain.

“A hybrid _what_?” Sam asks, glancing back at Hank. Every time he looks away, the man seems to change a little more. His hair looks thicker now: coarser. His teeth are too big to fit comfortably in his mouth, so his lower jaw hangs open to display two-inch-long yellowed fangs.

“Werewolf and berserker,” Dean grunts as he shoves the grating the rest of the way free.

Sam can see the werewolf now that Dean has mentioned it: remembers the claws and the teeth from a hunt when they were kids. But he can’t seem to wrap his mind around what Dean’s trying to tell him. “What?” he asks, and then, “ _How?_ ”

“Got bit handling one of Dean’s playmates,” Hank says. “Mr. Camargo thought it’d be interesting to see what happened if you put a wolf spirit inside someone who was already part wolf and I volunteered. Worked, too. I’m the only one strong enough to handle our Fenrir, aren’t I, Dean?”

“Sam, let’s go,” Dean says urgently, but Sam is staring at Hank’s eyes. He feels half hypnotized.

“Is he really?” he asks without looking away from Hank. “Is he as good as you?”

“I already said he was, now can we just get the fuck out of here?”

“Why didn’t Vincent make more of them?” Sam presses. God, the size of those _teeth_. And here Sam has been thinking that the man is nothing more than an uncultured loud mouth. Talk about your hidden depths.

“I’ll tell you later, Sam, just—”

“He tried,” Hank breaks in. “The others went nuts and ripped themselves apart. He gave up.”

“They _all_ went nuts,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Some of them just didn’t have the decency to put themselves out of everyone else’s misery.”

“You’re real funny, Winchester,” Hank says, shifting his gaze to Dean’s back. “Wonder if you’ll be as funny when I’m feeding you pieces of your brother’s skin.”

“See?” Dean says. “Nuts. Not to mention bad-tempered as a junkyard dog and ugly as sin. Now can we _go_?”

Now that Hank isn’t staring at him anymore, Sam’s finding it easier to think. He isn’t sure, but there might actually be something to his stray thought about being hypnotized. There are animals with the ability to do that, he knows, and who can tell what kind of weird powers are going to develop when you cross two supernatural creatures. Maybe the eye thing is why Dean hasn’t been looking at Hank.

“Yeah,” Sam mutters. “Let’s go.” He turns away, crouching so that he can lower himself into the drain.

“Guess you never actually tapped that ass, huh, Sammy?” Hank calls. “What with you two being brothers and all.”

Dean has gone stiff across from him, and he’s looking everywhere but at Sam. Sam wonders for a fleeting moment if Hank knows about what happened last night and then dismisses the idea. It’s difficult to put his finger on why exactly, but the barb just doesn’t feel like it’s aimed in that direction.

“Too bad,” Hank adds as Sam hesitates. “Cause I’ve gotta say, he’s really good. Sweet as pussy.”

Sam turns his head slowly, careful not to look directly in Hank’s eyes. He can see the man’s smug smile just fine, though.

“What, Dean never told you I was the one who broke him in?”

Sam darts a glance at his brother, hoping for derision or denial and already knowing in his gut that he isn’t going to find it. Dean’s eyes are pressed shut, and his forehead is creased. He looks like he’s in pain.

“Dean?” Sam rasps.

“Let’s just—can we just go?” Dean whispers.

“He liked it, the whore,” Hank calls. “Moaned like a real professional.”

There have been a lot of times over the past six months when Sam thought he was angry: when he would have sworn he was caught up by towering rage. He didn’t know then that anger could seep into every cell of his body with a saturation that makes his skin hurt. Didn’t know that anger could make his very bones pulse. Didn’t have the faintest clue that rage doesn’t taste like blood but like white heat, like ozone, like lightning.

And now he has the power to back it up.

There’s no conscious decision to reach for the darkness inside of him. It comes with the fury, riding the cresting wave and howling a war cry. As the demonic taint in him swells, it becomes aware of Dean—of the meat mongrel sitting so close and vulnerable—but even that ancestral hatred is lost beneath the relentless force of his will.

 _Die_ , he thinks, and the word shudders out from him in an atomic burst of red.

There’s a boom as Sam’s power hits the firewall and snaps the entire thing from its frame. Hank’s body is tossed backward by the impact and he hits the far side of the hallway a fraction of a second before the firewall follows. There’s a thud that’s even louder than the sound of the firewall snapping lose was and then everything is silent.

Hank is a Rorschach of red flattened between two walls.

Temporarily sated, the darkness inside of Sam recedes, taking the power with it. He stares at the red mess and his only regret is that he wasn’t coherent enough to take his time.

“Fuck,” Dean says faintly, and Sam looks over at his brother. Dean is staring at the smear that used to be Hank with a wide-eyed, faintly sickened expression.

Sam grins weakly and jokes, “Guess we don’t need to use the drain anymore, huh?”

Dean blinks once and then tears his eyes from the firewall’s new resting place to stare at Sam. He doesn’t smile. The horror on his face continues to deepen.

“What the _fuck_?” he whispers.

Sam searches through everything he could say to explain what just happened—talk about letting the cat out of the bag—and settles on, “He hurt you.”

Instead of flushing with embarrassment, or telling Sam he can take care of himself, Dean scrambles up at that. One second he’s standing by the discarded grating and the next he has his back plastered against the far wall. The horror on his face is slowly shifting to dismayed resignation.

Sam knew that Dean wasn’t going to like how much his powers have developed, but this reaction seems a little extreme, even for his brother. “Dean?” he says, getting to his own feet and following.

“Just because you’re in my brother’s body doesn’t mean I won’t rip you out and shred you if you come any closer,” Dean spits, and Sam stops. Realization isn’t a slow bloom but a sonic boom throughout his entire body.

Geri smelled the demon in him when he used his power in the dream. Dean was sitting right next to Sam this time, and what he did to Hank was far more powerful than the tiny shove he used in his sleep. No way Dean missed it. He was just too shocked to fully absorb what that smell meant at first.

Sam raises his hands in front of him, palms out and fingers splayed in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. “Dean—”

“Shut up,” Dean snaps, and Sam does. He’s willing to do whatever Dean needs him to until his brother is convinced that he isn’t a demon. “What—” Dean gives his head a sharp shake and then continues, “Is this a game? You got a few dozen friends waiting to meet us topside? Or were you just gonna wait until we got downstairs and have Ash open up all the doors?”

“I’m not a demon,” Sam says softly. He’s very careful not to move anything but his mouth.

“Oh, right. The wall just turned Hank into the middle of a jelly sandwich because it felt like it. Sure. Okay.” Dean laughs: a jagged, cutting sound. “Man, you’re good. I really thought—I thought you were him. Why didn’t you fuck me? Would’ve been a good story for the rest of you bastards around the hellfire.”

“I’m not a demon,” Sam repeats more strongly. “It’s me.”

“Oh, give me at least a _little_ credit.”

Sam just looks at him silently and Dean grimaces.

“Fucking demons. Fine: Christo.”

Sam flinches. He can’t help but flinch because it _hurts_ : that word is like acid inside of him. But he keeps his eyes steady on his brother and he can tell from Dean’s sudden confusion that they didn’t change color. Maybe he’s not that far gone yet. Or maybe it’s just not that kind of taint.

“What are you? You some kind of half-demon? Well? Talk to me, damn it!” Dean’s panting now, frantic and confused and so _hurt_ that it’s all Sam can do not to run to him.

“I smell like a demon because I have infected blood,” he explains carefully. “I don’t know when it happened, but it was probably before the fire.” After a brief pause, he clarifies, “Before the first fire. In Lawrence. It’s why I have visions, and when I started to look for you after Bobby told me what happened, things … progressed.”

“That’s crap,” Dean shoots back. “My brother’s _fine_. He—”

“I moved the bookcase, Dean,” Sam interrupts. “At Max’s, remember? This was just … a little more.”

Dean still looks doubtful, but mentioning that earlier incident gave Sam an idea that makes his pulse speed with desperate hope.

“All those visions, man,” he says. “You were right there. You stayed with me, held onto me—I know that my powers were weaker then, and you weren’t—you had the amulet, but didn’t you ever smell it on me? Even a little?”

“No,” Dean says, but his eyes flick down and away.

“You did,” Sam breathes in relief.

“I don’t know _what_ I smelled,” Dean responds. “It was a long time ago.” His voice is gruff enough that Sam knows he isn’t lying: that his brother's memories aren’t clear enough for him to be sure. But he’s at least listening now—is willing to entertain the idea that it really is Sam—and that’s a step in the right direction.

“Ask me anything,” Sam presses.

Dean considers that suggestion for a moment and then shakes his head. “If you _are_ Sam, then you’ll know that won’t prove anything. There’s tons of shit that could get inside of his head: tell me anything I wanted to know. Hell, you could be some freaky kind of shifter.”

Sam can tell he doesn’t really believe that, though. Now that his initial scare is over and Sam isn’t exuding demon scent anymore, Dean’s body posture is slowly relaxing.

“I don’t smell like a shifter, do I?” Sam guesses, and the way Dean’s eyes go opaque tells him he hit the mark. “I’m right, aren’t I? I smell like Sam.”

“Because you’re wearing his body.”

“Because I’m _him_. You know I am, man: you’re just afraid to believe it.”

“I need you to prove it,” Dean whispers. “I can’t—I don’t know what the fuck to believe anymore.”

“Okay,” Sam murmurs, nodding his head. He doesn’t have the faintest idea how he’s going to convince Dean that he’s himself, but he knows that he needs to get closer to do it, so he chances a step. When his brother tenses but doesn’t show any sign of attacking, Sam continues to edge forward. Dean lets him approach until they’re breathing each other’s air again, and Sam can see his brother’s nerves in the way the tic in Dean’s cheek keeps jumping.

“This isn’t gonna help,” Dean says, licking his lips.

“Yeah, it is,” Sam answers, and kisses him.

It’s the briefest, most chaste kiss he can manage, and he keeps his eyes open. Stares into Dean’s eyes as their mouths meet and they share a slow, shuddering breath. Inches back.

“You know who I am, man.”

“Sam,” Dean exhales, his entire body slumping as the tension runs out of him. “ _Sammy_.” Then Dean’s arms are around him, pulling him in for a crushing hug. “You asshole,” he mutters against Sam’s neck. “You stupid fucking asshole, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Sam answers. His voice comes out hoarse: choked with relief.

“I’ll take care of it, okay?” Dean says, pulling back. “Bobby knows demon lore, he can help. We’ll figure out—”

“I already have a lead,” Sam interrupts, thinking of Geri’s strangely child-like eyes blinking at him from his brother’s face.

“What?” Dean frowns, but the expression is thoughtful rather than disbelieving. “Who is it?”

Let Sam count the ways he’s not telling Dean _that_ right now. “Later, okay? You know, when we’re not in the middle of an escape attempt?”

“Oh. Right.” Running his fingers through his hair, Dean darts a look at what’s left of Hank and then coughs into his other hand. “So, uh, elevator?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam insists on taking both cases of syringes, even though the one with the Ragnarök makes Dean twitch whenever he glances at it. He isn’t sure what he was on the verge of understanding when Hank interrupted them, but he has the feeling it was important. That the _Ragnarök_ is somehow important.

The hall leading to the elevator is empty now: all of the people that he and Dean caught out in it on their way past have locked themselves securely in the rooms. As they jog by, Sam catches glimpses of familiar, wide-eyed faces peering out at them. It feels like days have passed since they were last here: for Vincent’s medical staff it probably feels a lot closer to the few minutes it’s actually been. Time is funny that way.

As they draw up in front of the elevator, Sam activates the microphone and says, “Okay, Ash: let’s get out of here.”

“That’s a negative, Red Leader. Someone’s trying to block my access at that end. I had to sacrifice control of a few systems.”

“And you picked our _transportation_?” Sam demands.

“It was that or activate the firewall,” Ash drawls. “Firewall sounded more important.”

Sam has to admit that Ash is probably right. If Hank had found them with the wall down, he would have killed Sam before Sam even registered that he was a threat, and then Dean would be stuck here. Alone and with no hope of rescue.

“Okay, right, good choice,” Sam says. “I’m guessing you worked out some other way down?”

“Plotting an alternate course as we speak, my man: right now just start by heading back to the drain.”

It takes a few more endless, wasted minutes to retrace their steps to the alcove. All of the faces in the windows are really starting to sink beneath Sam’s skin, leaving him itchy and uncomfortable, and it’s probably worse for Dean: after all, he’s the one they’re actually staring at. Just before they make their final turn, Dean bangs his first abruptly against one of the doors. The face in the window goes white with terror before disappearing.

“Go stare at something else,” Dean mutters under his breath.

Sam’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear that, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Back in the alcove, they stand on opposite sides of the hole in the floor and peer down. “I ever tell you I hate sewers?” Dean asks. His voice is artificially light, but Sam is thankful for the illusion of normalcy.

“Technically, it’s a drain,” he points out with a half-smile.

“Oh, that makes me feel loads better, thanks,” Dean grumps, but he’s smiling too. Part of it has to be the Hank-shaped smear he keeps sneaking glances at, but Sam guesses that most of it is just the fact that Dean is actually beginning to believe that they’re going to make it. “So what does Mapquest have to say now?”

“Ash?” Sam transmits. “We’re there.”

“Okay, there’s about a fifteen foot drop down before you join the main line. Then you need to head left, pass the first three intersections, and turn left again. About three hundred feet down, there should be a maintenance hatch. It’ll let you out on the eleventh floor again.”

“Is that first left facing the hallway or turned away from it?”

“Uh …” There’s a pause as Ash figures out the answer to Sam’s question and then he says, “Facing.”

“Okay, and when we get to the eleventh floor?”

“Well, uh, then you can take the stairs.”

Sam frowns. “There aren’t any _here_?” he asks, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he tries to remember the blueprints.

“All the floors are self-contained except for the bottom two.”

Of course. In case of an attack or a robbery or an attempted escape on Dean’s part, Vincent would want to be able to freeze everyone in the building. But then again, he’d also want to make sure he could get his prize possession out if the Arena ever lost power. Since Dean spends the majority of his time on the eleventh and twelfth floors, it makes sense that Vincent would have an alternate route between them.

Sam passes along the directions to his brother and then asks, “You ready?”

“Yeah.” Dean’s studying the dark circle between them with an almost imperceptible gold sheen in his eyes. The trickle of power he’s tapping isn’t even enough to set off any of Sam’s internal alarms. “I’m going first. You won’t be able to see for shit down there.”

Sam hasn’t thought about it, but Dean’s right. Drains aren’t liable to have lampposts every few hundred feet and neither of them is packing a flashlight.

Dean climbs down to sit on the edge of the drain and then tucks the case of Gleipnir underneath his arm. “Bombs away,” he grunts, and pushes forward. A moment later there’s a thud and a splash from below and then a muffled noise of disgust.

“Dean?” Sam calls, getting into position for his own drop.

“There’s about a foot of water down here,” Dean calls back. Then, in an undertone that echoes up to Sam, “ _Better_ be water.”

“I’m coming down!” Sam warns, and then gives Dean a few moments to get out of the way before pushing off the ledge. He falls into darkness for almost an entire second, bracing himself for impact, and then strong hands catch him around the middle and Dean lowers him the last few inches gently. Sam can make out the glint of his brother’s eyes, a hint of his curving mouth where the light illuminates his skin, and nothing else. Dean shifts his grip to something gentler on Sam’s waist but doesn’t let him go.

“What was that for?” Sam asks, trying to ignore the way the press of his brother’s hands is making his heart speed.

“It’s a fifteen foot drop,” Dean responds.

“Yeah, fifteen, not fifty. We’ve both done higher falls before.”

Dean finally takes his hands away and Sam regrets arguing with him. Wishes he had a little more time to enjoy that warm, reassuring contact. But Dean scared the shit out of him, grabbing him like that: if he’d miscalculated his position, or if he hadn’t been as strong as he thought, then Sam’s weight could have hurt him.

“Bottom’s slick as hell,” Dean says, and now that he’s not being braced by his brother’s hands, Sam can feel the precariousness of his balance: some cold liquid rising midway to his knee and what has to be slime or algae slipping between his shoes and the bottom of the drain.

“I wasn’t about to carry your ginormous ass out of here because you slipped and broke your ankle,” his brother adds, turning away.

Sam bends to fish the case of Ragnarök out of the water and that’s when he notices the smell. “Holy hell, it reeks in here,” he gasps, covering his mouth and nose with one hand. It doesn’t help.

“Yeah, I didn’t think anything could smell worse than Hank, but this is a whole new low,” Dean says dryly from a few feet in front of him.

Sam gags on the air, nausea rising thick in the back of his throat. And this has to be a hundred times worse for Dean. “How can you stand it?”

“Honestly?” Dean says, moving back toward him. “I’ve been living on a cell block with about fifty demons for the past six months. You learn to breathe around the stench after a while. It’s like monkey house syndrome.” He bends down into the water and a moment later presses the dripping case to Sam’s chest. “There’s your stupid drug; now let’s go.”

Sam starts after his brother as Dean leads the way and comes to a sliding halt a few seconds later. “Dean?” he calls, and senses Dean move closer.

“What?”

“This isn’t going to work. I can’t see. I keep losing my balance.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean sighs, and then slips underneath Sam’s arm to steady him as they continue on.

“What do they smell like?” Sam asks after a moment.

“Demons?”

“Yeah.”

Dean’s silent long enough that Sam thinks he isn’t going to answer, and then he says, “What’s your worst memory?”

“You dying,” Sam responds immediately, and Dean stiffens at his side. “Or, well, thinking you were dead.”

Maybe Dean feels more comfortable having this kind of conversation in the dark because instead of deflecting, he swallows audibly and then says, “Sorry.”

It may not sound like much, but Sam can count the number of times Dean has apologized without being forced into it on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. He squeezes his brother’s bicep briefly and murmurs, “Thanks.”

Dean immediately clears his throat and says, “Anyway, that’s how they smell.”

It should be a crappy description. Sam was looking for an answer more along the lines of ‘rotting eggs and feces’, and Dean’s response doesn’t seem like an answer at all at first. Emotions don’t have smells, after all.

Then Sam remembers what it was like without Dean: how the world went dark and cold, the way that the keening loss inside of him got so strong and present sometimes that it almost _did_ have a scent, like dried tears and wasted dreams, and thinks that it might not be such a bad description after all.

“We just passed the first opening,” Dean says.

They continue on silently for a few minutes and then Sam kicks something in the water. “Hold up,” he says, changing his grip on Dean so that he can reach down.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asks with unconcealed impatience.

“I just kicked something.”

“Well excuse me if I can’t get them all out of your way,” Dean snaps, and grabs Sam’s wrist to pull his hand out of the water.

“What are they?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“ _Dean_.”

Dean sighs. “Bones, okay? You happy now?”

Sam’s eyebrows draw together in a mixture of revulsion and confusion and his stomach lurches unpleasantly. “ _Bones_?” he repeats. “Why the hell are there bones in a drain pipe?”

Dean nudges him to get him moving again and then says, “You didn’t wonder why these pipes are so big?”

Well, now that Dean has mentioned it, he is. Sam’s mind flits through several possibilities and then settles on one that makes his skin pebble in goose bumps. That _smell_ …

“Bela said Vincent modeled this place on the ancient Roman gladiatorial arenas.” After a pause where Dean doesn’t respond, Sam adds, “They used to flood the coliseum sometimes. For naval battles.”

Dean sighs again, and when he speaks his voice is filled with reluctance. He’s obviously sorry he told Sam about the bones in the first place. “Leave it alone.”

“That’s why the seats are so high up, isn’t it?” Sam pushes. “That’s why they wanted you to be able to hold your breath.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, but his silence is answer enough.

Sam swallows and then makes himself ask, “What’s down here with us?”

Dean is silent for a few more steps and then he says, “You ever heard of con rits?”

“No.”

“Yeah, me neither. Vinnie imports them from Asia. He says they’re a type of _dragon_ —” Dean says the word with disbelieving scorn “—but they look more like overgrown millipedes to me.”

“How big?” Sam whispers, skin crawling at the thought of all those legs and body segments.

“Fifty feet long, coupla feet wide,” Dean answers. “Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye out.”

“You’re _keeping an eye out_?” Sam repeats incredulously. “You knew what was down here as soon as you smelled the air, didn’t you?”

“I knew when I was trying to pull up the grating,” Dean admits with a shrug. And then, with an undercurrent of vindictiveness, “I didn’t want to worry you.”

Sam deserves that, so he doesn’t argue. Instead, he asks, “Can you handle one if it finds us? How many are down here anyway?”

“I don’t know how many he’s got, and no, I can’t. They’re covered with these thick plates. Bitch to cut through even when I have a weapon. Which, hey look! I don’t.”

“We have guns.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Dean grunts. “One of them comes at us, you’re gonna have to do your freaky mind thing.”

Shit. “I can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?” Dean demands, and for the first time he sounds nervous. “What, do you have to recharge or something?”

“No, but it—I just _can’t_ , okay?” Now really isn’t the time to get into the fact that reaching for the power makes Sam want to rip Dean open and spread his insides around the room, so he’s really hoping Dean will accept that as a statement of fact and move on.

“No, it’s not ‘okay’,” Dean says. “Why can’t you—” He shuts up abruptly, going still, and Sam’s gut clenches.

Somewhere, there’s the soft, skittering sound of legs on the side of the drain.

“Move,” Dean blurts, and yanks Sam forward with a burst of speed that has Sam stumbling as he tries to keep up.

“Where is it?” Sam pants as he runs, splashing foul water everywhere. “Dean, where—”

“Behind us,” Dean bites out, and then jerks Sam to one side down another drain. This must be the left Ash told them to take, which means they’re only three hundred feet from getting out of here. And that’s fantastic news because now there’s this clacking noise along with the scuttling.

Suddenly, all Sam can think about is the giant ants in this old 50s horror movie he saw when he was a kid. They had these huge pinchers that could cut a man in two, and although they never showed any real gore in the movie, his nightmares the week or so after he watched the film were more than graphic enough to make up for it. He thought he was moving as fast as possible, but at the memory of those dreams Sam somehow manages to put on an extra burst of speed.

“Hatch!” Dean shouts, shoving Sam against the side of the drain to stop his forward momentum. Sam loses his footing and falls into the water, one hand coming down on something thin and algae-slick with a rounded knob on the end. Someone’s femur.

Dean is fumbling with something above him, swearing under his breath, and that scuttling noise is almost on them now. In a few more seconds, Sam is going to have to use his power and hope he can stop himself from turning Dean into a pile of dripping meat. Then Dean makes a victorious, relieved noise and the side of the tunnel swings open.

Dean hauls Sam up by his shirt and, in the weak light filtering into the drain, Sam gets a brief, horrifying glimpse of something huge and mottled brown rushing toward them. Feelers tumble from the con rit’s blind face in a quivering mass. Although the pinchers from Sam’s nightmares are missing, the con rit’s jaws are open and the triple rows of jagged, slime-slicked teeth are more than enough to make up for them.

Then Dean shoves him and he’s falling through space. Half a second later, he fetches up hard against the floor. Dean crashes down with a grunt beside him and there’s a roar of disappointment from above.

Sam rolls over onto his back and looks up at the hole in the wall by the ceiling. The con rit is moving past the opening, and every once in a while a couple of its long legs, each the yellowish-brown of mucus and tipped with a sharp claw, flop out as it pushes itself along. Finally, after what seems like hours but is probably only a few seconds, it’s gone.

Into the stunned silence, Dean says, “You take me to the nicest places.”

Sam stares at his brother for a moment and then bursts out laughing. Dean’s laughing too, and the hall is briefly filled with the slightly hysterical sound of two men surprised to be alive. Then Dean pushes himself to his feet and helps Sam up.

“I can’t believe you held onto that,” he grunts, keeping his voice low now that the moment of hysteria has passed. Sam understands why: they have next to no line of sight on this floor, which means that there’s no way of knowing if there’s anyone around to hear them right now. And Dean probably can’t smell for shit with the con rit’s reek all over the both of them.

Sam glances down at the case in his right hand and then shrugs. “You still have yours,” he points out.

Dean gives him a condescending, ‘well, duh’ look and then looks around at the hall. “So where to?”

Sam worries for a few seconds that all the water will have shorted the mike out, but when he calls, Ash’s voice comes back loud and clear. “Two rights, a left, and then another right,” he relays, and then reaches behind him to check his guns.

He lost one of them in the run, but the other is still there, and all the magazines are still clipped onto his belt. Pulling the remaining weapon out, he follows Dean down the hall.

“Dude, you reek,” Dean whispers, wrinkling his nose.

“You’re no bouquet of roses yourself,” Sam responds, but he drops back a little. He’s all but drenched in the foul-smelling water, and Dean will have a better chance of scenting trouble coming if Sam keeps his distance.

“First thing I want when we get out of here is a shower,” Dean says, and then peeks around the first corner. When he slips forward, Sam follows.

“And a Big Mac,” Dean adds. “They still have those, right?”

Sam’s tempted to tell Dean to shut up, but he understands that his brother's nerves are strung a little tightly. They’re so damned close to getting out of here that he can practically taste it, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still get fucked two feet from the end zone.

“Fuck McDonalds. When we get out of here, I’m buying you all the prime ribs you can eat.”

“Promise?” Dean grunts, leaning forward to peek around another corner.

It happens so quickly that Sam doesn’t understand what he’s seeing at first. One second Dean is craning his neck around and the next he’s falling to the floor and dropping the case.

“Dean?” Sam blurts. It doesn’t occur to him that this is some kind of attack because Dean isn’t bleeding. He doesn’t look injured. He’s just writhing on the floor like he’s being electrocuted, both hands digging futilely at the nape of his neck.

Sam sprints to his brother’s side, dropping down and skidding the last few feet, and reaches for him. “ _Dean_!”

He never sees the gun butt that comes out of nowhere and slams into the back of his skull.


	27. Jumpstart

The blow doesn’t drive Sam unconscious, but it scrambles his brain enough that he’s too disoriented to do more than slump sideways. Someone kicks the gun out of his hand and someone else drags him forward into the new hallway to lean him against one wall. Dean is dragged alongside of him, and then past him, and Sam flails an arm out after his brother. The kick he gets in return drives the air from his lungs and hunches him over in a gasping cough.

“I trust you had fun on your little outing?”

The familiar, cultured voice draws Sam’s head up through the pain and dizziness. Vincent stands in the middle of the hall with Dean, his hands still curled protectively around the nape of his neck, at his feet. He changed at some point in the evening, and the suit he’s wearing now is a pale canary. There’s something clasped loosely in his left hand: a remote. When Vincent takes his hand off the remote’s button, Dean drags in a sobbing, relieved gasp.

“Gonna kill you,” Sam pants as he tries to find his feet.

Vincent’s mouth quirks as he watches Sam slowly drag himself up using the wall for support. “Kill me and your brother dies.”

“You’re bluffing,” Sam says. His voice comes more strongly this time and he straightens, one hand still pressed against the wall to steady himself. His head aches and his gut is sore where he was kicked, but his mind is finally starting to catch up to the situation he and Dean just stumbled into.

There are eight guards in the hall—six of them focused on Dean and carrying pistols that must be loaded with the tranquillizer Bela told him about, and two aiming automatic pistols in Sam’s direction. Sam notes their presence and then dismisses them, focusing on the only two people who matter: Vincent and his brother.

Brushing an imaginary speck of dust from the lapel of his jacket, Vincent says, “I’m really not, Mr. Winchester. Or can I call you Sam?”

Sam could grab hold of the power now—he’s thinking clearly enough, and the darkness is eager to be used—but he hesitates. Vincent might not be bluffing, and Dean isn’t being hurt anymore, so Sam has a little time to consider the situation. Besides, he doesn’t want to risk losing control and hurting his brother unless there are no other options left.

“How long have you known?” he asks, trying to keep Vincent’s attention on him while Dean recovers.

“Since your little exhibition with Hank.” Vincent ducks his head and hitches his shoulders up in a mimic of a fighter’s stance. “You have a tendency to favor your left side.”

Sam has heard John yell at him often enough to know that Vincent is telling the truth. It’s Dean’s fault, really. Sam grew up with his brother an unwavering presence to his left: Dean shielding him and taking any blows that came his way. By the time John realized that Sam was adjusting to that—that his faith in Dean was developing into a habit—it was too late to correct the problem.

The fact that Vincent has watched Sam fight enough times to pick up on that weakness—that he’s taken the time to familiarize himself with the way Sam holds himself—sends chills down his back. He’s worked hard over the years to compensate for it: building up camouflage good enough that Dean complimented him on it after their run-in with a ghoul in Arkansas. It had to take Vincent a while to find the flaw in his technique: longer to familiarize himself with it enough that he recognized Sam from only a few minutes of sparring.

Jesus, was Vincent watching him and Dean the entire time they were reconnecting after Stanford?

“Why didn’t you do anything?” Sam asks.

The corners of Vincent’s cash-colored eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Because letting you try and fail is a more effective lesson.”

Dean stirs at Vincent’s feet, laying his palms on the floor and trying to push himself up. Without taking his eyes from Sam, Vincent puts his left foot on Dean’s shoulder and shoves him back down hard enough that Dean grunts.

“Stay.”

“Get off him,” Sam growls, flexing his hands and taking a step forward.

“Careful,” Vincent warns, and pushes the button on the remote. Dean lets out a choked cry and starts to twitch again underneath Vincent’s foot. One of his hands is curled into an agonized claw and there’s a line of spittle running out from the corner of his mouth.

It takes every bit of Sam’s will not to attack then and there, but there’s still a small seed of doubt at the back of his mind. He can’t risk the chance that killing Vincent will kill Dean as well. He could try focusing the attack against Vincent’s guards and merely pinning Vincent to the wall, but that’s all it would be: an attempt, and a weak one at that. He hates the man too much, and hatred is exactly the kind of emotion that the growing darkness inside of him feeds on.

Clenching his jaw, Sam grounds out, “You’ve got ten seconds to convince me not to kill you.”

He half expects Vincent to laugh at him—he’s an unarmed man with two guns trained on him and there are another six men between them. And Vincent can’t know what Sam is capable of: if he did, he never would have left Sam conscious. He’s too cautious to make that kind of mistake. That same caution must be the reason Vincent tilts his head in acknowledgement and releases the button.

Dean sucks in a breath and then sluggishly mumbles, “Summabitch.” His fingers unclench and he flops his hand at Vincent’s leg as though trying to push him away.

Vincent doesn’t even seem to notice the feeble movement as he raises his hand to give Sam his first good look at the remote. It’s nothing more than a small, black rectangle with a blue button in the center.

“This,” Vincent explains, “Sends a signal to a small device at the base of your brother’s skull. Every time I press the button, that device sends a mild but incapaciting electrical current through him.” He demonstrates, sending Dean into a third round of convulsions, and Sam snaps forward another step before dragging to a stop.

He stops because he no longer thinks Vincent is bluffing.

Vincent must see the belief in Sam’s eyes because his smile deepens and he gives a short, satisfied nod. Looking down at Dean, he crouches next to him and then brushes Dean’s cheek with his knuckles before resting his hand on the back of his head. The expression on Vincent's face is almost fond.

“You didn’t actually believe that I thought the Gleipnir would be enough to hold you, did you?” he murmurs as he strokes Dean’s hair. “You must have known I’d have a failsafe in place.”

His hand curls around the back of Dean’s skull before dropping to the soft indentation at the base, where he presses his thumb down. Sam knows the moment Vincent’s thumb finds the implant because his brother’s eyes widen in shock.

“Ah, there it is,” Vincent says, rubbing his thumb over the implant in a circular motion.

Dean’s face creases with discomfort. He lets out a little grunt and digs his fingers into the floor. It can’t be a pleasant sensation: having someone play with something imbedded under your skin.

“Tiny, isn’t it?” Vincent muses, tipping his thumb up so that his nail catches on the small bump. “Practically invisible.”

Sam wants to yell at him to stop it, to get his goddamned hands off of Dean, but he looks at the remote in Vincent’s other hand and doesn’t quite dare. It isn’t worth Dean getting another shock. He chances a glance at the guards and they haven’t relaxed their vigilance at all. More details seep in now as he adjusts to the situation and lets John’s training take over.

The men with the tranquilizer pistols also have automatics in holsters at their belts. Their eyes are hard: flat. Two of the men focused on Dean are wearing gloves: thick, bulky things that are going to slow them down a little from pulling the trigger. Considering how careful Vincent is with his planning, it’s surprising until Sam realizes that the gloves are probably resistant to electricity. Must be how they were able to drag Dean to Vincent’s feet without being electrocuted themselves.

“When?” Dean rasps, and Sam’s attention snaps back to his brother.

“I had Dr. Thorsen implant it the same day I marked you. Do you remember?”

Dean obviously does. His mouth twitches like he isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. As Vincent traces his cheekbone with one fingertip, Dean's eyes shut in weary resignation.

“There are two settings,” Vincent announces in a louder voice as he looks back up at Sam. “The first, as you’ve seen, is activated by remote and delivers somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 milliamps of current. The second is triggered by my death. Over the course of one minute, the current will steadily rise from the usual 15 milliamps to 100, at which point your brother’s heart will begin to undergo ventricular fibrillation. Ventricular fibrillation is—”

“I know what it is,” Sam interrupts. His voice sounds too deep: rough with the things he wants to do to the smiling man in front of him.

God, it’s the rawhead all over again.

Vincent laughs good-naturedly and stands. “Yes, of course you do. Nebraska, wasn’t it?”

“Montana,” Sam corrects. Nebraska was where Dean was saved. Where another man died so that Sam could have his brother back. He thinks of Gordon and the others upstairs and a wave of dizziness makes him sway—more from the severity of the déjà vu than from the blow he took to the back of the head a few minutes ago.

“My mistake,” Vincent says graciously, and then spreads his hands. “Either way, you do understand what I’m telling you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Sam tries, although there’s a deep, trembling part of him that already believes. “He’ll live longer than you, you wouldn’t—wouldn’t waste an investment when you die.”

“No, of course I wouldn’t,” Vincent responds in a mildly surprised tone. “When I retire, the safeguard will be transferred to my successor through the use of a ritual which, I can assure you, I will die before disclosing.”

Sam’s shoulders sag.

“I see we’ve reached an understanding,” Vincent notes.

“Killa baschard,” Dean slurs from the floor, rolling his eyes to look at Sam.

But Sam blinks back a film of tears and nods to Vincent. This is the end, right here. When it comes down to it, Sam isn’t going to be responsible for Dean’s death. Not when there’s even the faintest, sliver of a chance that he’ll be able to get Dean out of here some day, get him to a doctor, cut the damned implant out of him. And Vincent knows it.

God, they were so fucking _close_.

At Vincent’s nod, one of the men covering Sam lowers his gun. Stepping forward, the guard frisks Sam with brisk competence. He takes away the two magazine holders, pulls the microphone free from Sam’s shirt, and removes the earpiece from his ear. Then, after clipping the magazine holders onto his own belt, he hands Sam’s radio over to Vincent.

“Impressive equipment,” Vincent notes. “Then again, Bela’s an impressive girl, isn’t she?” He toys with the devices, rolling them around in his palm while Dean pants at his feet. “Do you know she tried to buy Dean from me?” he asks, regarding Sam speculatively. “Offered me three million dollars.”

Sam didn’t know, but he isn’t surprised by the information. After all, he _did_ know that she wanted to get her hands on Dean. Vincent’s comment on the catwalk makes more sense to him now, though: a message to Bela to keep her distance.

“She sold us out, didn’t she?” Sam says dully.

Bela has her own earpiece. She could have been listening: would have known right where they’d come out.

But Vincent raises an eyebrow. “No, actually. This meeting was just a felicitous coincidence. We would have found you sooner or later, of course, but I have to admit that I’m pleased things fell out this way.” Tilting his head, he adds, “I suppose this means you can’t tell me where the little bitch has run off to.”

So, Bela’s still loose and presumably on their side. A tiny glimmer of hope sparks in Sam. If Vincent remains unaware of Hank’s death—or more precisely of _how_ he died—and doesn’t block Sam’s abilities, then all Sam needs to do is wait until the man is elsewhere. Then he can plow through everything between him and Dean: get his brother out.

This can still work.

At Sam’s continued silence, Vincent shrugs. “Pity,” he murmurs.

Dean’s limbs are finally obeying him again—for the most part, anyway—and he’s making another clumsy attempt to get up. This time Vincent lets him, taking a step back to give him room.

“The second you try anything,” he warns, “My men are going to shoot your brother in the head. You’re fast, Dean, but you aren’t fast enough to kill them all before someone shoots Sam. So you’ll want to think about that very carefully before you make any sudden moves.”

Dean’s up on his hands and knees now, and he lifts one hand from the floor to wipe at the line of spit on the side of his face. His hand shakes as he puts it down again. Staring at the floor, he works his mouth a little and then says, “Don’t hurt him.” His words are coming out clearly again, but the voice producing them is so wrecked and hopeless that it hurts Sam to hear it.

“Well, that depends on you, doesn’t it?” Vincent points out.

“I’ll be … good.” The promise is reluctant and dragging, but Dean doesn’t make any attempt to do anything but kneel there. Debasing himself for Sam.

“Dean, don’t,” Sam says brokenly. He knows that his own surrender isn’t forever, but Dean doesn’t. Dean thinks he’s signing up for years of pain and degradation and he’s doing it anyway. He’s begging for it.

“Anything you want. Anyone you want. Please, just … let him go.”

Shaking his head with an air of insincere regret, Vincent cups Dean’s chin. “I’m afraid that isn’t an option anymore,” he says as he tilts Dean’s face up. “Sam isn’t going to stop trying to rescue you, and we both know it.”

Sam can’t see his brother’s face from where he’s standing, but he can imagine his brother's expression well enough from the distress clogging Dean’s voice when he says, “He won’t—he—if he promises, you could—”

“Your brother stays here,” Vincent interrupts. “If you’re obedient, he won’t be mistreated. I may even allow you a conjugal visit every now and then. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Dean’s head makes a sharp, aborted jerk as he starts to pull away from Vincent’s hand and then stops himself. It takes Sam a moment longer to realize what Vincent is saying—what it _means_ —and then his stomach drops out from underneath him. His face feels stiff and foreign; unreality lays over everything in a heavy fog.

Vincent glances up at Sam’s expression and smiles. “I had a few cameras installed in the suite once I realized who you were. No sound, unfortunately, but I think I got the gist of things from your performance last night.”

The thought of Vincent watching them, of him seeing the violence of that night, is bad enough. The fact that he undoubtedly watched them tonight as well—that he was watching Dean sleep, unguarded and vulnerable, in Sam’s arms—is enough to make Sam quake with enraged disgust.

“You sick fuck,” Dean grounds out. He sounds as violated and angry as Sam feels.

“Temper,” Vincent warns, finally releasing Dean’s face. There’s a calculating glint in his eyes as he looks from Dean to Sam and then back again. “The old texts say that true berserkers mate for life.”

“You’re the expert, Vinnie,” Dean mutters.

“It’s said that if one half of a mated pair died, the other would soon follow. They lost the will to live.”

Sam doesn’t like the way this conversation is going. Neither does Dean, from the way his shoulders have gone stiff and guarded.

“We’ll have to find a way to keep Sam around a little longer, I think,” Vincent continues. He tilts his head in consideration. “Do you think that vampirism counts as death?”

Dean lets out a snarl and starts to come up from the floor, but Vincent is expecting it and has his finger on the remote. Dean has only just begun to straighten when his muscles give up on him again. He drops back down with a heavy smack.

“Dean!” Sam shouts. He pushes forward, fighting to get to his brother, and only belatedly realizes that he’s struggling with one of Vincent’s guards: that there’s another pair of restraining hands on his biceps. The darkness is laughing at him, all but daring Sam to reach out and take hold of the power: to stop this, still their hearts, kill them all.

But that would kill Dean, too, and Sam can’t let that happen.

Vincent seems to hold the button down forever this time, and when he finally releases it Dean’s eyes have rolled back in his head. He’s pale and sweating, and his right leg keeps twitching uncontrollably. Vincent makes a tsking noise and kneels next to Dean. Smoothes his damp hair back.

Sam is slightly calmer by the time Dean starts coming around again a few minutes later, but he can’t keep himself from straining forward at the sight of his brother blinking up at Vincent with dazed awareness.

“There you are,” Vincent says. “Feeling better?”

“Touch … him … kill … you …” Dean manages.

“Kill me and you die, Dean,” Vincent responds soothingly. “And if you die, I don’t think Sam here would stick around very long, would he?”

Dean’s still too out of it to control the despairing, keening noise that comes out of him. It’s eerily like the wolf’s cries in Sam’s dream, but there’s no gold in his brother’s eyes. Sam doesn’t think Dean’s strong enough right now to reach for it.

“Don’t worry,” Vincent says, giving Dean’s cheek a final pat. “I haven’t settled on vampires yet. After all, I don’t know how long _demons_ last, do I?”

Dean’s lips draw back from his teeth and he makes an ineffectual swipe at Vincent.

Chuckling, Vincent stands again. “If I’d known just how close you two were, I never would have wasted my time with the Gleipnir,” he announces.

On the floor, Dean flops over onto his stomach and gamely tries for his feet. He manages to get back up on his knees and then stops. His breathing is ragged, and sweat drips from his nose: from his chin and hair. His right leg has stopped twitching for the most part, but every once in a while Sam can see the muscle in his brother’s thigh jump.

Vincent turns to the closest guard with the air of a man who has just conducted a satisfying piece of business and says, “Get Mr. Mason down here to take the Fenrir back to his room.”

Dean lets out a barking laugh and Sam’s stomach tightens. He wants to tell Dean to keep his mouth shut: Vincent’s going to find out soon enough anyway, and all Dean’s going to get for taunting him with Hank’s death is a few more volts. He doesn’t say anything, though, because he can see his brother’s face and he already knows it isn’t going to do any good.

Vincent’s lips turn down as he turns back to Dean. “What’s so funny?” he asks, voice flat.

“You want your fetch-and-carry boy down here, you’ll have to scrape him off the wall first,” Dean says. His eyes spark with careless anger. “And while they’re at it, they can pick up what’s left of the good doctor a few halls over.”

Vincent’s jaw works for a moment and then he says, dangerously, “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?”

Dean jerks his shoulders in a shrug. His face is drawn with pain and exhaustion, but he still manages to smirk. “What can I say? I get around.”

Vincent grabs Dean by the hair and pulls, yanking his head back at a painful angle and bringing him to his feet. Dean’s thighs tremble and his right leg gives a helpless jerk as Vincent turns him to face Sam.

“You take a good look at your brother,” Vincent hisses. “Because I guarantee this is the _last_ time you’ll be seeing him. Just imagine, Dean: knowing he’s only a few floors away … waiting for you … wanting you … and you’re going to be spreading your legs for anyone who can pay for it.”

Dean meets Sam’s eyes and Sam knows. He _knows_.

 _Don’t_ , he tries to yell, and can’t make his mouth work.

Dean offers him a smile, sweet and wide and open. Free. Sam thinks that his brother’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. He just turns in Vincent’s grasp, sinks his bare fingers into the man’s throat, and rips.

Now Sam screams: a wordless cry of protest as he grabs the power and lashes out with it. One of the guards gets off a single shot that whines harmlessly past his ear, but the other men die before they can get their fingers on the trigger. Sam doesn’t have two walls to crush them between this time, but it turns out that he only needs the one. When he lets them go a second later, the bodies that drop to the floor slosh like water balloons: every bone and organ turned to jelly with the force of the impact.

The power sings through his veins, victorious and laughing, and for some reason it isn’t screaming at him about the meat mongrel. When Sam turns to his brother, he sees why.

Dean is twitching uncontrollably on the floor next to Vincent’s body. Blood trickles out from Vincent’s ruined throat, adding to the warm, red pool that is already creeping around Dean’s face as his body jerks and shudders.

He’s dying.

 _Good_ , the darkness purrs, but Sam’s desperate _fearloveneed **NO**_ is stronger and he sprints across the hall. He touches his brother’s body without thinking and the current arcs from Dean’s flesh into his. Sam’s heart stutters and then the power is there, isolating the flow and diverting it harmlessly over the surface of his skin. Sam lets the power take care of that on its own while he forces his brother onto his stomach.

He has to get the implant out of Dean. He isn’t a surgeon, could kill his brother trying, but Dean’s already dying anyway. Better to kill him trying to save him than to just sit here and watch it happen. Sam pushes the hair up off the back of Dean’s neck and reaches for the ankle sheathe he isn’t wearing before he remembers that he isn’t carrying his knife.

“Damn it!” he screams, leaking power all over the place. The walls and ceiling and floor crack with lightning zigzag patterns, and the lights flicker wildly.

Beneath his hands, Dean takes one last hitching breath and doesn’t let it out again. His body continues to jitter for a few more seconds and then even those tremors trail off as the device at the base of his skull finally shuts down.

Sam kneels in a hallway with the dead.

 _Ten seconds._

He heaves Dean up onto his thighs. The _(dead)_ weight of it knocks him back a little so that he’s sitting with Dean in his lap. Dean’s head rolls loosely and Sam sees that his brother’s eyes are still open. There’s nothing there. The vibrant green irises have already faded to a pale, almost colorless shade, like watered-down tea. The bloom of blood at the corner of his right eye is shocking in comparison.

“No,” Sam moans, crushing his brother to his chest. “No no no no.”

 _Thirty seconds._

He shoves Dean forward abruptly: drops him on the floor and rolls him onto his back. “Not leaving me,” he mutters, completely unaware of the way that the walls are shaking around him. He pinches his brother’s nose and covers Dean’s mouth with his own and forces air into him. Comes up and folds his hands together, pressing them down over Dean’s chest, over the unseen ginkgo constellation, over his heart.

Pushes. Pauses. Pushes. Pauses.

“—don’t—you son of a bitch, don’t you _dare_ , you— _fight_ , damn you—”

 _Two minutes._

It isn’t working. It isn’t—nothing’s happening.

“Fuck you, Dean, you breathe. You fucking _breathe_!” Sam shouts. Behind him, there’s a sound like fire igniting and the smell of burning flesh.

Sam pounds down on his brother’s chest again—it worked in Montana, he got Dean going again, he kept him going until the EMTs got there and then when Dean crashed again in the ambulance they zapped him and jump started his heart and—

“Oh my God,” Sam whispers.

 _Three minutes._

He yanks Dean’s shirt open, ripping buttons and sending them flying. One side is soaked with Vincent’s blood and Sam’s hand leaves red smears as he presses down on his brother’s chest again. He’s running on instinct: has no idea if he’s able to do this, let alone if it’s going to have any kind of effect.

“Work,” he whispers. “Fucking _work_ , you son of a bitch.”

He reaches into himself, into the darkness, and finds what he wants.

Electricity arcs around his fingers and down into Dean, arching his brother’s back up in a painful thrust.

Sam releases the power immediately. Pinches Dean’s nose shut and breathes into his brother’s mouth. Presses down on his chest. Reaches for the power. Releases the power. Breathes into his brother’s mouth. Presses down on his chest. Reaches for the power.

 _Four minutes._

Dean’s eyes widen, sparking with a color that isn’t green or gold but a strange mix of the two, and it’s like a switch has been thrown inside of Sam. One second he’s praying desperately for some sign of life—anything, come on, Dean, come on—and the next he’s vibrating with the desire to keep frying the meat mongrel until it’s nothing more but a pile of burnt flesh.

 _No! Dean, it’s **Dean** ,_ a voice cries deep inside of him, and he yanks his hands free just in time to direct the stronger, killing bolt of electricity across the hall where it sets the wall on fire. The darkness retreats, snarling and unsatisfied, and Sam slumps back.

Dean is coughing weakly on the floor, trying to catch his breath and failing miserably. His eyes look bruised and his skin is an unhealthy, ashen shade, but he’s breathing. He’s _alive_.

Sam makes himself move, pulling Dean against his chest and holding him there. “You asshole,” he babbles. “You goddamned selfish son of a bitch. Don’t you _ever_. I thought you were—fucking bastard—”

“Love you … too … Sammy,” Dean rasps.

Sam laughs and holds him closer.


	28. Peer Pressure

It takes Sam almost five minutes to convince himself that Dean’s alive, and another five to make himself let go. He ignores his brother’s complaints that his back is getting sore _(so what, Sam’s chest feels like someone just drove a semi into it)_ , that they need to get moving _(now that Vincent’s dead, Sam’s pretty sure they don’t have a time issue anymore)_ , that Sam is a fucking girl who needs to grow a pair _(Dean can call Sam whatever he wants, so long as he’s got the breath to do it)_. Finally, Dean gives up and rests his head against Sam’s shoulder. His breathing is erratic at first, but it’s already steadying when Sam finally lays him gently back down onto the floor.

Dean licks his lips, blinks, and then says, “I didn’t know we were having a barbeque.”

Sam panics for a moment, worried that something in Dean’s brain snapped, and then the smell hits him as well. He looks around and realizes that two of Vincent’s guards are smoking. A third is still on fire. The rest of the damage filters into his consciousness slowly, and although his skin feels feverish, he shivers.

“Can you move?” he asks, turning his back on the destruction.

Dean tries and manages to shift his arm a few inches before dropping it again. Sam’s chest aches more strongly and he scrubs at his suddenly burning eyes.

“Hey,” Dean says, fluttering his fingers against Sam’s thigh. “That was pretty good for someone who’s been mostly dead all day.”

Sam wants to think it’s a good sign that Dean’s making jokes, but it’s Dean, and he’d make jokes on his deathbed. Besides, it isn’t funny.

“Four minutes,” he croaks.

“What?” Dean says, confused.

“That’s how long you were dead. Four minutes.” Sam turns away before the first tears fall, busying himself with retrieving their things. His hands are shaking so violently that he drops the earpiece twice before he manages to get it in his ear, and he can’t manage the microphone at all.

“Close your eyes and count to ten,” Dean says softly from behind him.

Sam closes his eyes and all he can see is Dean. Dead. With piss on his pants and Vincent’s blood on his face and throat and chest and—

He opens his eyes and lets out a sharp breath. Stares down at his hands. Wills them to be steady. It takes a few seconds, but the shaking first subsides into tremors and then stops altogether.

He raises the microphone to his mouth and presses the button. “Ash?”

“Sam?” It isn’t Ash’s voice but Jo’s. “Sam, what happened? Ash started yelling that you were all dead, and then I tried to talk to you and no one was there, I—are you okay? Is _Dean_ okay?”

“We’re fine. We ran into a snag, but we—we got through it.” Dean’s pale, lifeless face flashes through Sam’s mind again. That bloodied speck at the corner of one eye. He rubs his forehead, reminds himself to breathe, and then says, “Jo, I need to know how much time we have before we expect company.”

“Okay, hang on.”

“Is that Jo?” Dean asks from behind him, and Sam feels an unreasonable surge of jealousy. After what he went through the last hour or so, the pettiness of his own emotions makes him smile humorlessly.

“Yeah,” he answers, turning around and going back to sit down next to his brother. He shifts Dean’s body so that his brother’s head is pillowed on his thigh and rests one hand over Dean’s heart. Feels it beating—slow and limping, but there.

Without warning, Jo’s voice chirps back into his ear. “Okay, Ash says that about twenty minutes ago something happened to the system. It sort of went haywire and started shutting itself down.”

Sam does the math and comes to the conclusion that Dean wasn’t the only thing set to self-destruct if Vincent was forced into early retirement.

“The elevators look like they’ve been fried, and most of the security systems are malfunctioning. From the radio transmissions Ash intercepted, it’s pretty chaotic up top.”

“I need a number, Jo,” Sam says when she’s done. “One hour? Two?”

“Ash says longer for security personnel—maybe as much as ten—but he still doesn’t know what the operating system is going to do. It—”

Then Jo’s voice is gone and Ash babbles, “It’s a self-destruct sequence. He must have embedded the algorithms in the—ow!”

In the background, Sam can hear Jo snapping, “They don’t care how he did it, Ash, they want to know how long they have!”

“About twenty more minutes,” Ash says, and Sam is about to swear when he adds, “I can, uh, stop it. If you want.”

“Do it,” Sam tells him, and then immediately says, “Wait, can you—can you just delay it? Put the countdown on pause or something?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Ash agrees slowly, “But I don’t see why I’d want to.”

Neither does Sam, but he still says, “Do that instead.”

“Why?”

Sam doesn’t know the answer, and his subconscious is falling all over itself trying to keep it that way, so he snaps, “Just do it, Ash.”

Dean touches his leg softly. When Sam looks down, his brother’s eyes are concerned. Like Sam is the one who flatlined less than half an hour ago. Blinking back another rush of tears, Sam catches Dean’s hand in his own.

“Done,” Ash announces. “So, uh, that makes it seven hours for sure. Until you could run into trouble.”

“Okay,” Sam whispers, and strokes his thumb along the edge of Dean’s hand. Clearing his throat, he says more strongly, “We need to regroup. I’ll let you know when we’re moving again.” He takes the earpiece out so that he won’t have to deal with the questions he’s sure Jo will have and tucks it into his pocket.

“We’re regrouping?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Sam tells him. “Do you know where the guest room is from here?”

Warily, Dean nods. “I can find it, but why—”

“You—I want to get you cleaned up.” Blood. Stench of urine. Dean dead.

Understanding dawns on Dean’s face, but he shakes his head. “We don’t have time, man.”

“Yeah, we do,” Sam corrects him, and then gets to his feet. Putting the case of Gleipnir on Dean’s stomach, he asks, “Can you hang onto that?”

Dean has to consider it for a moment, but he nods.

“Okay.” Sam casts one last glance at the other case—the one he felt was so important an hour ago for some lost, unknowable reason: the one that was smashed by a falling piece of the ceiling and is still sluggishly leaking its glowing red contents across the floor—and then crouches and scoops his arms under his brother. With a grunt of exertion, he manages to lift Dean and staggers upright. Things are a little better now that he’s standing, but Dean isn’t a small man. Sam really hopes that the guest suite isn’t too far away.

“This doesn’t make me the girl,” Dean mutters. Before Sam can respond, he adds, “Go back the way we came and turn right.”

Dean falls asleep twice on the way back to the guest suite. He seems to be getting worse instead of better: is more disoriented—weaker—every time Sam wakes him for directions. By the time the bodies of the guards Dean killed come into view, Sam’s arms are aching and he’s more than a little worried about his brother.

Hurrying his steps, he goes straight to the suite’s bathroom and sits Dean down against the wall next to an absurdly small shower. It seems out of place in the room, given the size of the tub and the gleaming gold fixtures, until Sam realizes that it’s nothing more than a set piece for some rich asshole’s fantasy. His skin crawls—he doesn’t want to be near the thing, let alone use it—but he doesn’t have much of a choice if he wants to get Dean cleaned up. Clenching his jaw, he leans in and turns on the water.

Dean makes a sleepy noise of protest as Sam pulls the Gleipnir free from his fingers and then subsides, head lolling limply to one side. Sam considers the bathroom counter for a moment and then decides that the case will be safer on a wider surface. It’s a stupid, irrational fear—if the thing survived getting chased through the drain by a hungry con rit, it’ll be fine if he accidentally knocks it onto the floor—but he still carries it out to the bedroom and lays it carefully on the center of the bed.

Better safe than sorry.

When he steps back into the bathroom, Dean is slumped over on the floor, one arm twisted awkwardly underneath him. At first glance, Sam can’t tell if his brother is still alive.

He almost trips over his own feet in his haste to get over to him. Dropping to his knees, he pulls Dean up into a sitting position and feels for a pulse. Dean’s eyes flutter open before he finds one, and at the sight of those disoriented, pale green irises, Sam’s whole body aches with relief.

“Oh thank God,” he breathes.

“’Ammy,” Dean mumbles, letting his eyes slip shut again.

“That’s right, man. I’m right here.” Sam’s voice doesn’t sound too shaky, despite the acrobatics his heart is doing in his chest right now. “Come on, gotta get you up.”

He hauls Dean to his feet, doing most of the work himself, and then leans his brother against the wall. With one hand on Dean’s shoulder and another on his hip, he holds him upright.

“Dean,” he says. “Hey, man.”

Dean’s head comes up and then lolls down again. “Whassit?” he slurs.

“Do you think you can stand on your own for a minute? I need to get you undressed.”

“Kay.”

Sam doesn’t trust the exhaustion in his brother’s voice, so he starts with Dean’s shirt, using his lower body to keep his brother more or less in place as he gets the torn fabric off. Then he steps back, one hand low on Dean’s stomach.

“I’m gonna let go now, okay? You ready?”

“Ready,” Dean repeats, and his eyes are open, so Sam carefully lifts his hand. Dean stays where he is and Sam’s chest loosens a little.

“Okay, good,” he says, and then starts undoing his brother’s pants.

Dean blearily watches as Sam opening his belt and lowers the zipper on his jeans and then his eyes snap wide. He starts struggling, pushing at Sam’s hands and trying to move away from the wall. Sam catches Dean as his legs give out and he falls. Dean immediately starts trying to hit him, weak as a baby and trembling.

“No,” Dean moans. “No, don’t.”

“Dean,” Sam calls. “Dean, it’s me, okay? It’s Sam. It’s Sammy.”

Gradually, Dean’s struggles slow and his eyes clear. “Sam?”

“Yeah, man,” Sam says, and Dean relaxes in his arms. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about accidentally dropping his brother, Sam shifts his hold so that his arms won’t seem so confining.

“I’m not going to do anything,” he promises. “I just want to get you cleaned up, all right? Hear the shower? You can’t go in with your clothes on, okay?”

Deans head swings toward the sound of falling water. Frowning, he squints at it as though he’s having trouble seeing. Or maybe it’s just the comprehending part that his brain is having trouble with.

Sam can’t keep himself from lifting his left hand to the side of his brother’s face. He touches Dean’s temple, his cheekbone, the corner of his jaw: hummingbird-light brushes that he isn’t sure Dean even feels.

“Dean,” he says, strengthening the touch as he rakes his fingers through his brother’s hair.

Dean shuts his eyes again and mutters, “Kay.”

Sam still isn’t sure Dean understands what they’re doing, but he reaches for his brother’s pants again anyway. Dean goes stiff against the wall, but he doesn’t try to fight this time, and he does his best to help when Sam asks him to lift his legs so he can get the jeans the rest of the way off.

After tossing the jeans across the bathroom after Dean’s shoes and socks, Sam pushes back to his feet. He debates stripping down himself—he isn’t at his freshest either—and then decides that it isn’t a good idea. He’s never been less interested in sex, but his brother is too out of it right now to understand that. If Dean gets confused again, he’s going to be left with the knowledge that he’s naked, with a man’s naked body behind him and a man’s arm holding him up, and things aren’t going to go well.

Even without a lip on the shower stall, it takes a few tries to get Dean under the spray while keeping him on his feet. Once he’s there, though, Dean relaxes against Sam’s chest without any sign of concern. Sam wraps one arm around his brother’s stomach and reaches for a bottle of shampoo. It smells like honey, and works up to a thick lather in moments. Keeping his eyes closed, Dean moves his head where Sam tells him to, and gradually the blood caked on his brother’s hair is washed away.

A little more maneuvering is necessary to get soap on the oversized sponge hanging next to the shampoo alcove. It’d be easier to accomplish if Sam had two hands to work with, but he doesn’t want to risk letting Dean go in here even for a moment. He wonders if this is how his brother felt during that long ago shared shower: if Dean’s chest was so tight it was difficult to breathe, if he kept getting flashes of Sam slipping and cracking his head open on the handle or the side of the stall.

 _You’re not gonna drop him,_ he tells himself sternly as he adjusts his grip on the sponge. Then, nudging Dean with one shoulder, he says, “I’m gonna wash your neck and chest now, okay? Dean?”

When Dean still doesn’t respond, Sam cranes his neck and finds that his brother’s features are lax: his lips slightly parted. He lets Dean sleep while he washes his body—easier than dealing with possible flashbacks—and then rouses him enough to get some help moving from the shower to the bed. Elbowing the case of Gleipnir aside, he lays Dean down on his back. Water immediately soaks into the bedspread, probably ruining the expensive fabric, but Sam couldn’t care less.

Dean is already asleep again by the time Sam straightens, and Sam leaves him that way while he hurries to fetch one of the oversized towels hanging in the bathroom. He dries Dean quickly but carefully, trying not to rouse him just yet. He’s wrapping his brother’s thigh in thick folds of the towel when he feels Dean’s muscles twitch beneath his hands. Still loosely holding his brother's leg, Sam glances up at Dean's face and finds his brother looking at him with glazed eyes.

“Hey, man,” Sam says softly, not sure if he should back off or not.

Dean looks at him for a moment longer and then flops his head to one side and shuts his eyes. A few seconds later, his breathing evens out again and sleep leaves him limp.

Sam bites his lip—this dropping in and out of consciousness thing can’t be a good sign—but he takes advantage of Dean’s unconsciousness to finish toweling him dry and then works his unresisting limbs into a pair of sweatpants and a worn t-shirt that he finds in the dresser.

There are plenty of clothes in those top three drawers _(although if Sam never has to think about what he found in drawer number four, it’ll be too soon)_ , and he only hesitates for a second before shucking off the soaked, ruined remnants of his suit and pulling on some new clothes of his own. The shirt’s a little tight across the chest, and the sweatpants are too short on him, but they’re still better than what’s left of Bela’s thousand-dollar suit. Besides, this is a rescue, not a beauty pageant.

When he returns to the bed, Dean is curled up into a ball: knees drawn up to his chest and head tucked in. Sam puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder and shakes him roughly.

“Dean,” he says.

Cracking his eyes open, Dean twists his head around. “Sammy? Wassamatter?”

“I need you to focus, man,” Sam tells him. “Do you remember where you are?”

Dean blinks around at the room, looking for clues, and then his face stiffens. “Arena.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Dean lifts a slow, shaking hand to his head. “We were—we were leaving. You came for me and we were—we went—why are we _back_?”

Sam sympathizes with the bewildered hurt in his brother’s voice. Everything they went through and now they’re right back where they started. _No,_ he reminds himself sternly. _Not ‘right back’. We have the Gleipnir._

“You were hurt,” he presses, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to his brother. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Dean breathes. Despite his exhaustion, he manages to look cross. “I’m sick of getting electrocuted. Next time it’s your turn.”

Sam’s lips twitch, but he’s too concerned to manage a full smile. Laying his right hand on his brother’s forehead, he says, “You seemed okay for a while, but now you keep falling asleep, and you’re disoriented.”

Dean frowns briefly and then his expression clears. “Sorry, ‘s my fault. It’s normal.”

“What do you mean, it’s your fault and it’s normal?”

“When I—the healing thing, if I’m hurt bad, it takes a lot of energy. So I sleep. And I—my brain doesn’t work so hot, and no jokes about _that_ being normal.”

The fear knotting Sam’s chest eases but doesn’t relax completely. “You were fine at first,” he points out.

“Cause I was fighting it.” Yawning, Dean slowly uncurls his body so that he’s lying flat on his back again. “Knew we needed to get going,” he adds. “But you—never could keep my guard up around you.”

Which is funny, since Sam doesn’t think he ever really saw Dean with his guard _down_ before tonight.

“I’ll stop,” Dean announces, blinking and trying to sit up. It’s pathetically easy for Sam to hold him down with nothing more than a hand on his forehead.

“Hang on,” he orders.

Dean gives him a stubborn glare, but in the end he has no chance of winning and he knows it. Grumbling under his breath, he subsides. When Sam is sure Dean isn’t going to try moving at the first opportunity, he shifts his hand down from Dean’s forehead to his throat and presses two fingers against his brother’s pulse. The beat is still a little erratic, but it’s noticeably stronger than the last time Sam checked.

Dean’s damaged heart healing itself while he lies there.

Nebraska all over again.

“We have six more hours,” Sam says. “We’ll wait.”

“Gonna take longer than that,” Dean argues, wrapping his hand around Sam’s wrist and pushing it away. “You don’t have to carry me anymore. This is good enough.” He sits up slowly, and it’s obvious from his wince that his entire body aches.

Sam wants to pull rank—or, well, use his larger size and greater _(right now, anyway)_ strength to make Dean rest a little longer, but he realizes that he doesn’t have the right. He may be worried about his brother, but Dean is desperate to get out of here. A short stairwell, a couple of hallways, and they’ll be home free. Then Dean can pass out for as long as he needs.

“We’ll go slow,” Sam says, “And any tightness in your chest, or shortness of breath, and we’re stopping to rest. That’s not negotiable.”

Tugging his t-shirt down a little lower over his sweats, Dean mumbles, “Whatever.”

“I’m serious, Dean. I’m not going through that again.”

Dean stares at his own hands and doesn’t answer.

“ _Dean._ ”

“You can’t save me, Sam,” Dean says finally, and Sam knows that his brother is thinking about Bobby, and the wolf, and the fact that they have less than a month’s supply of Gleipnir.

Sam wasn’t planning on letting Dean go anywhere even before he died in Sam’s arms in the hallway. And now?

Sam’s pretty sure he’d rip Heaven itself apart to get his brother back.

“Watch me,” he says, and hauls Dean up to his feet.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The stairs are tricky. Dean keeps tripping and almost falling, even with Sam’s arm around his waist, and he refuses to let Sam carry him. The third time he almost goes over—which is consequently on the third step down—Sam loses his patience and sweeps Dean up anyway, tossing him in a fireman’s carry over one shoulder and ignoring his shout of protest. The motion is awkward with the Gleipnir in one hand, but he manages fine.

“Dude! Put me down! I’m not a goddamned damsel in distress!” He twists and somehow manages to smack the back of Sam’s head.

“Ow! Damn it, Dean, I’ll put you down when we get to the bottom.”

“You’ll do it now or I’ll kick your ass,” Dean counters.

Sam refrains from pointing out that, wolf or not, the only way that Dean would be able to take down a ten year old girl right now would be to fall on top of her. Instead, he grates out, “You just got electrocuted: you want a broken leg on top of that?”

“I can walk fine.”

“Oh, for crying out—fine.” Sam stops and puts Dean back on his feet, them moves away and leaves him clinging to the railing. “You wanna walk, go ahead.”

Dean glares at him sullenly and doesn’t move. They both know it’s taking all of his energy just to stay upright.

Sam nods grimly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He moves in and when he picks Dean up again, the only complaint he gets is a grunt and a, “Careful with the merchandize.”

They make it to the twelfth floor without any further incident, and Sam puts his brother down—more gently this time. “Anyone ever tell you you were a stubborn asshole?” he asks as Dean loops one arm around his shoulders again.

“Anyone ever tell you you were an annoying bitch?” Dean mutters back.

Sam huffs in wry amusement as he opens the stairwell door and brings them through. They’re on the opposite side of the floor from where they want to be: standing in Dean’s own personal gymnasium. The walls have been covered with a mural of some far northern forest: all pines and dirt. Vincent might have done it as an attempt to make Dean more comfortable here, but from what Sam knows of the man he doesn’t think that’s very likely. No, he’s pretty sure that this mural is here for the same reason that the flat screen with the live feed of the Arena’s grounds is on the wall in the guest suite bedroom.

To remind Dean of what he’s never going to have again.

Although in this case, Sam’s pretty sure that Vincent would have gotten more of a reaction if he’d decorated the walls with fast food signs. Dean’s never been a huge fan of the great outdoors.

Sure enough, Dean looks around with a weary sigh and says, “Fucking trees.”

Hiding a grin, Sam scans the walls for their destination and then asks, “Where’s the door?”

“Far wall to the left,” Dean answers.

Now that his brother has pointed it out, Sam can make out the thin lines running through the mural: the painted protrusion of a handle. Getting a better grip on Dean’s waist, he starts forward again.

“There are gonna be demons on the other side,” Dean points out.

“They’ll still be locked in, and I’m not planning on letting them out,” Sam says, skirting around a weight bench. “Are you?”

“Hell no,” Dean scoffs, and then grins at him weakly. “See how I did that?”

“I’ll appreciate your wit later, Dean. Right now I just want to get out of here.”

“Amen to that,” Dean grunts, and then Sam opens the door.

The hall on the other side is ocher, with grey metal doors set at even intervals. The doors are fitted with sliding windows—all of them shut at the moment—and marked with red paint. Sam brings them to a pause by the first door and studies the symbol. It looks strangely familiar.

“Dude, come on. It fucking reeks down here.” Dean’s breath is coming a little labored: probably from the scent of trapped demons oozing out from all sides and clogging his throat. Sam should get them moving again, but he’s almost figured out why …

“They’re modified devil’s traps,” he blurts, surprised.

“ _Sam_.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam agrees reluctantly. He feels … weird. Kind of like he’s moving through molasses. It takes him a few steps to realize where that sensation is coming from: that it isn’t anything external, but the darkness inside of him waking up again in slow pulses. So many demons so close: after what happened in the Arena tonight, he should have known he’d be affected.

Drawing up short, Sam raises the hand he’s holding the case of Gleipnir with to his forehead. He can sense Dean’s flaring concern even before his brother grips his shoulder with his free hand.

“Sammy?”

“I’m fine. I just need to … regroup …” Sam’s words trail off into an absent mutter as he concentrates on stuffing the power as far down as he can get it. He’s done using it. Sure, it saved Dean’s life, but then it tried to kill him again.

“You have to do that _here_?” Dean says incredulously. He could mean the hallway, but even through his distraction Sam can tell that he doesn’t.

Lowering his hand, he looks around. “Why, what’s he—wait, is that—” He touches the symbol on the door they stopped next to with his knuckles. It has the same basic design as the others, but where they’re surrounded by the normal mystical symbols from the Lesser Key of Solomon, this one is bounded by runes.

“It’s a devil’s trap,” Sam says. “Written in Elder Futhark.”

“Gee, ya think?” Dean mutters, and tugs at him.

“This was your room.”

Sam’s vision darkens with the realization. He wants to use the power badly enough that he can taste it at the back of his throat like heat. He wouldn’t have to touch it for long—just for a second, just long enough to rip the door from its hinges and fold the walls in on themselves. The darkness stretches inside of him, hungry and eager.

Then Sam thinks about the bolt of lightning that shot out from his hands and ignited the wall—the bolt meant for Dean—and turns his back on the impulse. Lowering his hand to his side, he asks, “Does it work?”

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Dean groans, which isn’t an answer.

He doesn’t really need Dean to tell him, though. He already knows that it works just fine. The same way that the original devil’s traps are designed to detect and hold demonic spirits in human bodies, this one is designed to trap animal spirits. Vincent really did think of everything.

Clearing his throat, Sam looks away from the modified trap and says, “Okay, let’s go.”

“Fucking finally,” Dean grumbles.

He’s still complaining about idiots who stop in the middle of jailbreaks to poke at the mystical symbols when they round the first corner. His head is down, watching where he’s putting his feet, so he keeps talking for a second after Sam comes to a horrified halt. Then he figures out something’s wrong, and looks up, and goes rigid.

Demons. Fifty-odd demons lining the hall and staring at them both with oily black eyes. The doors in this corridor are still gaping open a little, and Sam understands in a flash that Vincent must have set them to unlock with his death.

After all, what better way to compliment a self-destruct sequence than to unleash your own personal piece of Hell?

The doors in the first corridor were probably open as well, but the demons shut them again. They shut them because they sensed Sam coming with Dean, and wanted to lure them into an ambush. Dean had smelled them, of course, but he hadn’t thought anything of it because their reek was already all over the place down here.

“Meat mongrel,” one of the nearer demons hisses, breaking the silence. “Come play.”

Dean flinches closer to Sam, his breath suddenly coming harsh and shallow.

“Stay back,” Sam snaps. His words don’t have any force—there’s no power behind them: he can’t risk it—but the demons don’t seem to be in a hurry anyway.

“Come on, Samuel,” a tanned man calls. “Give us the killer …”

“ … the whore …” comes an echo from further down the line.

“ … the animal …” a third demon adds.

“We’ll take good care of him,” yet another leering voice promises.

Dean, too weak to do more than cling to Sam, makes a despairing sound at the back of his throat.

“Better yet, play _with_ us,” the demon closest to them suggests. “You know you want to …”

“… fuck him …”

“… use him ….”

“You don’t have to kill him,” the first demon adds. “We could break him in for you. He’d make a good little pet …”

“… slave …”

“… whore …”

The soft, frightened noise that Dean is making sharpens into a panicked whine and Sam tightens his grip on his brother. Tilting his head to the side while keeping his eyes on the demons, he whispers fiercely, “They’re _not_ taking you.”

“It’s too dangerous to live,” a demon wearing a toned, Arabic body snarls. “Rip it apart, bathe in its blood!”

“… kill it …”

“… destroy the meat mongrel …”

“… too dangerous …”

“… killer …”

They’re working themselves up to it: still afraid of either Dean or Sam or maybe both, but that won’t last. One of the closer demons shuffles forward a little, black eyes filled with hunger, and licks its lips.

“Take turns,” it says. “Everyone gets a piece.”

“Oh God,” Dean breathes against Sam’s chest, and then he’s begging in a rough, damned voice, “Kill me—shoot me—don’t let them—”

He strains to reach the gun tucked in the waistband of Sam’s sweats so he can do the job himself, and Sam. Just. Can’t.

“No!” he shouts, and grips the power with both hands, hauling it close. He can control this, he can take care of the demons, not hurt Dean. He _can_.

“Die,” he commands, sweeping his eyes over the demons. “All of you.”

The room rocks, walls cracking and ceiling flickering with fire, as an explosion of sulfur chokes the air. Black clouds circle violently and then shred with jagged, yellow tears before raining down onto the floor in a thick sludge. There’s a scream like nails on the underside of a coffin and Sam feels something pop inside of his right ear. Blood, warm and wet, trickles out.

“Sam,” someone is whispering, and “Sammy,” but he can’t see through the cloud, through the pain in his head, through the _hateragefurykill_ pounding through him, and he doesn’t know who this ‘Sam’ is anyway. Has more important things to think about.

The meat mongrel isn’t just close but pressed up against him, so vulnerable and fucking _tempting_. Trembling.

He doesn’t know what he wants to do to it first. So many red delights, such a frail body to work with. Then the mind: taunt it, hurt it, degrade it until there’s nothing left but a blank-eyed stare and then, finally, end the thing’s pitiful existence.

 _No_ , a tiny, almost inaudible voice whispers through the maelstrom. _Don’t. Dean._

But the voice is ripped away, lost and drowned and gone for good. Fanfuckingtastic, now he can concentrate, he can get to work.

He’s going to start by breaking the meat mongrel’s legs: it’s weak, but there’s still a chance it will find some energy reserves and try to run. He could catch it easily, of course, but he’s itching to get to the good stuff already, none of that cat and mouse crap. So: break the legs—wrists too, maybe, so it can’t crawl off when his back is turned—and then he’ll strip it, unveiling all of that smooth, unmarked skin. That beautiful empty canvas.

He’s going to paint a masterpiece.

“Sam,” that voice that isn’t coming from inside of him says again, and then the meat mongrel is _kissing_ him, and crying, and something in Sam’s— _Sam, I’m Sam_ —head clicks and it’s _Dean_ kissing him—Dean, his brother: Dean, who he loves.

 _Kill it_ , the darkness roars, and Sam quakes with its rage. _Kill it now._

 _No_ , he thinks back. _No, I won’t._

The darkness snarls, ripping at him, and he pushes against it. He reaches into something that feels like fire and smoke and flaking, charred flesh and wrestles it down. It’s like trying to stuff a whirlwind into a bottle, and he can feel his strength fading as he fights. He isn’t going to make it: he’s going to lose himself again and _torturemaimrapekill_ Dean.

Then there’s a jarring snap that tosses him free and he’s falling …

…falling…

…falling…

Gone.


	29. Severance

The first thing Sam is conscious of is confusion. He’s confused because there are two different voices—both vaguely familiar: one male, one female—and they keep blabbing at him, one voice throwing words on top of the other so that he can’t make either out.

He concentrates in the darkness, trying to sort the messages out, and only gets more confused. The man keeps telling him that he has control of the elevators, that Bela is on her way down to them, to copy, is he there, oh God, Jo, I think they’re dead.

What makes it more confusing is the fact that he’s finally placed the other voice, and it’s Bela’s, and she’s _here_ , so she can’t be on her way anywhere. She’s talking about … a business opportunity, which isn’t all that surprising.

Then there’s a third voice, weak but defiant. Dean. Telling Bela to go to Hell.

Sound of breaking glass, and then Bela saying brightly, “Oops. How clumsy of me.”

Sam opens his eyes. He’s lying on a floor that looks like it was hit by the aftershocks of a volcanic eruption: all broken and lifted slabs and covered with a fine black powder. His head aches, and the place where the darkness is usually waiting feels burnt and hollow. His right ear is a steady scream of agony. Blood trickles down from it, wetting the side of his face.

Everything comes back with a rush that would have had him gasping if he could have managed it, but Sam is too weak to do more than breathe shallowly. Great. Now who’s going to carry Dean out?

Wait.

Dean.

Bela.

Something breaking.

 _The Gleipnir._

Ash’s voice in his ear has been replaced by Jo’s, thready with panic and interspersed with pauses as she gives him a chance to reply. He pushes the sound to the back of his mind and concentrates on Bela’s throaty purr.

“… just so slippery,” Bela is saying.

“Put it down or I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, please. You can barely stand right now.” Another smash. “My, I _am_ clumsy today.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Dean’s trying to sound strong, but his desperate frustration is seeping through.

Sam tries to move his head and finds that he can manage it. He still feels like shit, but at least his muscles aren’t completely out to lunch. He turns it carefully: slowly. Prays that Bela is too involved with Dean to notice that Sam is back among the conscious.

“I made a deal nine years ago,” Bela explains. “You don’t need to concern yourself with the details. Suffice it to say that in ten months there’s going to be a rather unpleasant personage arriving at my doorstep to escort me to Hell. Obviously, I’d rather not go.”

She has Dean propped up against the wall a few feet away. Dean is leaning at an angle, left shoulder resting on the wall and right hand curled into one of the cracks running through the wall’s surface. His eyes have that puffy, red look they get when he’s been crying, and there are tear tracks cutting through the demon-dust darkening his cheeks. Those clean lines of skin seem overly pale, and Sam thinks he can see purplish bruises beneath his brother’s eyes. He has to wonder if, between the demons, Sam almost losing control, and Sam collapsing, Dean went and worked himself into a heart attack.

Bela is immaculate as always, lovely and cultured and dangling one of the syringes of Gleipnir by the forefinger and thumb of her left hand. The case is open at her feet, and there are shards of glass and a pool of glowing, blue liquid that’s wider than Sam would like. He doesn’t know how many syringes Bela has broken, but it has to be more than the two he heard.

Neither of them has noticed that Sam is moving: Dean too intent on the Gleipnir in Bela’s hand and Bela too focused on Dean.

“You want me to kill it,” Dean says. “Get you out of the deal.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s it?” Dean presses, his voice hoarse.

Bela’s smile is condescending. “Well, I did invest a good deal of money in your rescue. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to repay me for my troubles.”

Dean laughs hollowly, but he doesn’t look surprised. He’s been used too harshly to expect anything else. “Too bad for you I’m not a gentleman.”

Bela looks amused by the refusal. She swings the Gleipnir she’s holding warningly and Dean snorts, shutting his eyes.

“Go ahead, bitch. I’m already living on borrowed time anyway.”

Despite his bravado, Dean still flinches at the sound of yet another syringe breaking. Sam has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting and giving himself away.

Bela hums to herself a little as she bends to the case. She spreads her hand over it, tracing the syringes, and says, “Yes, I see that. Is this all you could find?” Without giving Dean a chance to answer, she continues, “It’s not much, is it? One shot a day, for … let’s see … you have a little over two weeks before Bobby Singer takes you out into the middle of a field and puts a couple of bullets in your skull.”

Suddenly, Sam knows where Bela is going with this: knows why she’s acting so confident. It was all laid out right there in plain sight for him to see: her arrangement with Vincent, the monthly payments and deliveries that they talked about … The Gleipnir, packaged in cases of thirty.

“I can get more for you,” Bela announces. “As much as you want.”

Dean’s eyes flash open. “You … what?”

“Where do you think Vincent was getting it? It doesn’t just grow on trees, you know.” She hefts another syringe in her hand and stands, offering Dean one of those too-broad, artificial smiles. “If you like, you can consider it payment for services rendered.”

“What kind of ‘services’?” Dean asks, but his eyes are locked on the syringe and there’s an expression there that Sam has only seen on his brother’s face once before: in Lawrence when their mother smiled at him.

Bela’s smile becomes more genuine as it deepens in triumph. “I deal primarily with acquisitions. I’m sure you’d be an asset there, of course, but I think we can both agree that your primary talents lie elsewhere.”

Sam doesn’t know if she’s talking about the killing or the sex and he doesn’t need to: either is equally damaging. He’s been slowly working his hand around to his back while he listened to their conversation and now he has his fingers on the butt of the gun wedged into his waistband. It’s already loose—either from Dean’s attempt to grab it or from Sam’s collapse—and it’s only going to take a small tug to get it free.

While Dean bites his lip, trying to work up the courage to ask what, exactly, Bela wants him to do, Sam takes a slow breath and steadies himself. The headache isn’t abating, which means he’s going to have difficulty seeing if he moves too quickly, and he’s pretty sure that the shooting agony in his ear is the result of a burst eardrum, which means he’ll probably also suffer some serious vertigo. But he’s stronger, recovering energy with every beat of his heart, and Bela is close enough that he isn’t going to miss.

Sam exhales and moves, pulling the gun and raising up onto one elbow. The room does spin, and his head protests the motion, but he ignores the white at the edges of his vision, focuses on Bela’s back, and fires.

His hands shake with the recoil, and the bullet flies high, but for once luck is on his side. The bullet punches into the left side of her head and out her right temple before imbedding itself in the wall a few inches above Dean’s hand. Dean’s face is peppered with her blood and he blinks, uncomprehending. Bela remains standing for a few seconds and then collapses, the syringe still clutched in one hand.

Dean blinks. Breathes in. Blinks. Breathes out. Raises a shaking hand to his face and smudges the flecks of blood. When he holds his fingertips up to his eyes, he makes a strange sound of disbelief that’s half laugh and half grunt.

Sam lets himself sink back down onto his back, thumbing the safety back into place and dropping the gun beside him. Dean doesn’t give any indication that he notices the motion or the clatter of the pistol hitting the floor. He just touches his face again, frowning this time, and then huffs his breath out incredulously.

“You shot her,” he says without looking at Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam sighs.

“You—” Now Dean looks over, looking confused and lost and ten years too young. “What would you do that for?” he asks.

Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, he does neither. “I could explain, but I don’t think you’d understand,” he says.

Dean’s face twists into an enraged, despairing expression. He takes a staggering step away from the wall and then his knees buckle, dropping him to the floor. Righting himself, Dean crawls through the broken syringes and over to Sam. There are pieces of glass stuck in his palms and knees, but Dean doesn’t seem to be aware of them. He grabs the collar of Sam’s shirt and shakes him weakly.

“You asshole! You fucking—you—she was gonna—I was gonna be _fine_. I was—”

“That wasn’t a solution,” Sam whispers, fighting to focus through the pain in his head.

“Not anymore it’s not!” Dean shouts back. “Because you fucking _shot_ her. The one goddamned chance I had and you put a bullet in her brain! You _asshole_!”

Sam really isn’t aware enough for this conversation. He can’t decide whether his ear or his skull hurts more, but either one alone would have been enough to make rational discussion difficult. “It’s done,” he says, and tries to get hold of one of his brother’s hands. “Hold still for a sec—”

Dean makes a wild noise and rips his hands free from Sam’s. The violence of the movement tilts him sideways and the hand he puts down to steady himself lands on the gun. He stares at it for a moment, like he’s trying to figure out what he’s looking at, and then his jaw firms.

Lifting the gun, he shoves it into Sam’s hand and wraps their combined fingers around the handle. Then he thumbs the safety off and presses his forehead against the barrel.

“Do it,” he spits. “You want me dead so fucking bad, you do it yourself!”

Sam’s too pain-fogged to follow his brother’s broken logic, and too terrified by the fact that he’s pointing a loaded gun at his brother’s face to think of something to say to diffuse the situation, so he settles for trying to let go of the gun. Dean’s fingers are still there, though, wrapped around his and keeping them tight. His eyes flash and he forces Sam’s finger over the trigger.

“Come on, do it,” he urges. Bela’s blood is startlingly red on his face: like a splash of discolored freckles except for the two places he touched himself and left smudges behind. His hands are shaking, which means that Sam’s finger is shaking on the trigger, and Jesus Christ this isn’t just bad but catastrophic.

“Dean—”

“What the hell difference does it make if you do it now or Bobby does it in two weeks?” Dean demands, and suddenly he’s crying. His tears spill out in a rush completely unlike anything Sam has ever seen from his brother before.

“No,” he whispers, and tries to tilt the barrel away from his brother’s forehead.

Dean won’t let him.

“Do it, you fucking coward. Pull the fucking trigger.”

“No,” Sam says more strongly, and this time when he wrenches the gun to one side it goes. Dean’s hands fall away from his and in Sam’s surprise he _does_ squeeze the trigger, but the bullet flies harmlessly into the wall. Dean doesn’t even flinch at the sound of the shot. He’s crying too hard to hear it, swearing at Sam and clinging weakly to his shirt.

Sam carefully puts the safety back on the gun and then tosses it away.

“Bastard,” Dean pants. “Oh, you fucking—you— _goddamn it_!”

It isn’t a hard punch, but it’s far more painful than any of the other punches that Sam has had the pleasure to be on the receiving end of because it escalates the pain in his head to something approaching supernova level. It’s more out of self-defense than anything else that he wraps his arms around his brother and yanks him down against his chest. Pain-wracked though he is, Sam is only getting stronger while Dean’s burst of adrenaline is wearing off and leaving him weak again. Dean struggles, of course, swears and curses sparking from his lips like water on a hot stove, but Sam just tightens his grip and holds him there.

Eventually, Dean’s struggles subside and his words slur into helpless sobs. His hands are clutching Sam closer instead of trying to push him away, and Sam feels secure enough to reach up and smooth one hand down the back of his brother’s head. The pain in his own head has receded again, making coherent thought difficult but not impossible.

“I hate you,” Dean hiccups. “I hate you, you fucking—”

“I’m not gonna let you die, Dean,” Sam says, rubbing his fingers against his brother’s scalp in a way that he hopes is calming.

Dean sucks in a quaking breath and then says, bitterly, “You have to. You can’t—I can’t be that. I’d rather be dead.”

Remembering his conversations with Geri, Sam says, “It can’t be that bad. I can’t—demons hate it, man: I can’t believe it’s evil.” Not to mention the fact that it had seemed … not _harmless_ , exactly, but not hurtful either … when he talked to it in Dean’s mind. More like a puppy than a vicious killer.

A few minutes of silence follow Sam’s observation, and then Dean says, haltingly but clearly, “The second time I … balked … they left me alone with the thing for three days. When they finally gave me the Gleipnir again, there was—there was blood everywhere, and a—a h-hand.”

Sam’s stomach turns over but he just holds his brother tighter. “Dean, you can’t know that you did anything. They could have set the room up so that you thought you’d—”

But Dean is shaking his head against Sam’s chest. “I remember. Bits and pieces. It’s like—like being falling down, shit-faced drunk. I get flashes, but not—not everything.” He pauses and then rasps, “I get enough.”

“Or like being drugged,” Sam says as things click together through the pain.

“Drunk, drugged.” Dean shrugs awkwardly in the circle of Sam’s arms. “Either way, I ripped the guy’s insides out.”

“No, Dean—the Ragnarök—the other drug, it wasn’t—”

God, how had Geri described it again? Something about hurting, and being angry, and feeling like there were bees in its head? Everything snaps into place abruptly and the clarity—the relief—that it brings drives the pain to the back of Sam’s mind.

“It’s like a seesaw,” he says. “With the blue, you’re up and the wolf is submerged. With the red, it’s the other way around—”

“So? It still used my hands to tear a person apart.”

Sluggishly, Sam tries to come up with an answer. He thinks of the way that Dean’s eyes are always slightly fogged: of the fact that, leverage or not, Vincent would have wanted Dean as docile as possible.

“Dean, how do you feel?”

“How the fuck do you think I feel?” comes the flat response.

“No, I mean on the Gleipnir. When you take it. Do you feel different than normal?”

Wearily, Dean sighs. “Sam, it’s been six months. I can’t remember.”

It doesn’t matter if Dean remembers, though. Sam’s sure that the seesaw metaphor is right: just a little simplistic. The Gleipnir _does_ bring Dean to the front, but it also dulls him, makes him more submissive. It’s probably the only reason that Dean hasn’t completely broken down yet: he can’t feel the full intensity of his emotions.

For Geri, the Ragnarök must do the opposite. It bottles up Dean’s awareness, while hyping the wolf’s aggressiveness, its anger, and—

And Dean is never going to believe him.

Either Bela or Vincent could have confirmed Sam’s newfound understanding, but they’re both dead. And any chance that they could have gotten proof from a sample analysis of the Ragnarök is lost: slick and wasted on the floor above them.

Well, when they run out of the Gleipnir and Dean doesn’t start killing everything that moves, he’ll have to admit that Sam was right.

“It’s gonna be okay, Dean. You have to trust me on this.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Sam holds Dean for a few moments longer and then, moving slowly for the sake of his own head as much as for his brother, he shifts Dean off of him and sits up. “Let me see your hands.”

Grudgingly, Dean holds them out. Sam winces—Dean drove the shards deep with the gun, by punching Sam—and they’re fresh out of tweezers. Sam isn’t willing to leave them in there, though. Dean’s immune system is probably running on empty right now, and the gashes could get infected. Or worse, Dean’s accelerated healing could kick in and his skin could close over the glass.

“I have to get these out,” Sam says.

“Fine.” Disinterested. Uncaring.

Sam reminds himself that he can fix this—fix _Dean_ —and then goes to work. Dean remains silent and still until Sam has to dig a small piece of glass out from underneath the soft skin of his palm just below his thumb. It slid sideways in all the commotion, and when Sam pushes it back below the entry wound, Dean hisses softly.

“Sorry,” Sam offers, grimacing in sympathy.

“Just finish.”

Sam does and then, when Dean slumps down onto the floor, clears his throat and says hesitantly, “I need to do your knees too.”

Dean glances down at the bloodied knees of his sweatpants with vague surprise—like he hadn’t realized he was cut there as well—and then sighs, rolling over onto his back. “Do whatever the fuck you want, Sam.”

Dean's knees are easier—his kneecaps kept the glass from penetrating too deeply—and a few minutes later, Sam’s done. He sits there for a moment, looking at the pile of bloodied glass he’s accumulated and absently rubbing his temple. The headache that he pushed to the back of his awareness while he was working on his brother’s injuries is threatening to return doubled, and the fire in his ear hasn’t died down at all.

He wonders if he needs to go to the emergency room to get patched up. Knows that he won’t. Losing the hearing in one ear is a small price to pay to have his brother back.

“So,” he says. “Race you out.”

The humorless laugh he’s hoping for doesn’t come. Dean just watches him steadily. Emptily. Waiting for something he has to respond to.

Sam’s throat threatens to close up on him and he looks away, blinking rapidly to clear his tearing eyes. There hasn’t been anything from over the earpiece for a long while—Jo stopped trying to contact Sam somewhere around the point where he was holding a gun to his brother’s forehead—but now he pinches the microphone on and says, “Hello?”

“Ohthankgod!” Jo returns immediately. “Where were you?”

“We ran into some trouble, but we’re okay. We’re, uh, about five hallways from the exit point. If Ash has to do something to open the door, have him do it now.”

Once he’s gotten both Dean and himself up, Sam knows that they can’t stop or they won’t be able to start again. This is going to have to be it: one last push to the finish line.

Any more obstacles, and he’s gonna throw in the towel himself.

“Okay,” Jo says. “Keep in touch?”

Like he doesn’t already have enough to do just keeping Dean and himself upright: now Jo wants them to check in every few minutes. But Sam’s too weary to scrounge up anything more than mild annoyance. Sighing, he answers, “I’ll do what I can.”

It takes three minutes of stumbling to get Dean back on his feet, but once they’re there, Dean’s actually able to hold most of his own weight. Which is good, because Sam’s barely vertical himself at this point. Navigating the corpse-strewn hallway takes them another fifteen minutes, but after that it’s smooth sailing. Sam lets himself zone out and moves in a searing cocoon of pain.

He’s surprised when, an undeterminable amount of time later, Dean’s voice says, “Hold up.”

“What?” Sam asks, dragging to a halt.

“We’re there,” Dean answers, and they are. They really are.

The drain on the other side of the hole in the wall is much nicer than the last one they were in: wide and dry and lit at even intervals with caged miner’s lights. It seems to stretch on forever, rising at an imperceptible angle, and Dean mutters, “Give me a fucking break,” as he stares at it.

“How about a golf cart?” Sam asks, and it’s hallelujah, thank God, something’s _finally_ going right. Their salvation isn’t precisely a golf cart, of course, but it’s a small, motorized vehicle sitting in a small alcove to the left, and that’s all Sam can think to call it.

They don’t have the key, but it doesn’t matter. Sam learned how to hotwire cars when he was ten, and the principle is the same. He maneuvers Dean into the passenger seat, unhooks the cart from the wall where it’s been charging, and climbs in himself.

Dean drifts off after a few minutes, cradling the case of Gleipnir in his lap the way a child would cradle his favorite teddy bear. Sam is going to have to wake him up when they get to the other end of the tunnel, but for now at least he lets his brother sleep. Hopefully, Dean will feel a little better when he wakes up again.

Sam keeps expecting something else to go wrong as he drives. The battery on the cart is going to give out. They’re going to run into some kind of security measure Ash didn’t detect and blow themselves up. A squad of Vincent’s men are going to be waiting at the other end.

This last fear takes root and grows in Sam’s mind until he’s sweating with it. He can see the moonlight glinting off the semi-automatics the men are holding. He can smell their aftershave: sees the mole on one man’s chin. Feels the bullets rip through his chest and skull, hears Dean’s startled cry as he wakes in time to see Sam slumping forward over the wheel of the cart.

And then he’s driving up a sharp incline and breasting into the cool, sweet night air.

The sky is clear overhead, pocketed with stars that are almost too bright to look at. There’s silence around them, and wide, open space, and no ambush. They’re high up somewhere in the mountains behind the Arena. Sam can see the building’s lights as pinpricks low in the distance.

They’re out.

Sam lets out a laugh, and shakes his brother’s shoulder. “Dean!” he calls. “Hey, man, wake up.”

Dean makes a muffled, inquisitive noise and opens his eyes. And stares. Tilts his head up and takes in a deep, shuddering breath, and doesn’t move.

“Dean?” Sam says more softly, brushing his shoulder. He catches a glimmer in his brother’s eyes and realizes that Dean is crying again.

“Hey, man,” Sam whispers. “Hey.”

“I didn’t think—” Dean cuts himself off and wipes his eyes on the back of his hand. “Jesus, I didn’t think we’d make it.”

“Me neither,” Sam says, and leans his head back to look up at the stars.

“Sam, I don’t—I don’t know how to—”

“You’re welcome.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam has a moment of panic when he doesn’t see the transportation they all assumed he’d find at the other end of the tunnel, but then he rounds an outcrop of rock and is confronted with a fender. The rest of what turns out to be a Hummer is buried beneath thick layers of brush that takes Sam several minutes to clear off.

There are keys in the Hummer’s glove compartment, as well as an envelope with ten thousand dollars in crisp hundreds. In the backseat, there’s a medical supply kit with plenty of painkillers—five of which Sam pops and swallows dry. There’s a cooler with bottled water, and military rations, and blankets, and four changes of clothes. Two of the outfits are Dean’s size. The others are the bright, flashy suits Vincent favored. He takes those and tosses them onto the ground before getting back in the car and driving it around to the golf cart.

Dean is sleeping again, face smooth in relief, and Sam rests his hand on his brother’s forehead and just stands there for a moment. Looking out across the foothills of the mountains, he finds the lights of the Arena. After a moment’s thought, he reaches for the microphone and says, “Jo?”

“Still doing okay?” she asks.

“We’re out. Let me talk to Ash.”

“Sam, that’s great!”

“Ash, Jo. Let me talk to him.”

“Hang on.”

A moment later, Ash’s voice comes back. He sounds about ten years older than he did at the start of the night. “Sam. Nice work.”

“Does Vincent’s self-destruct sequence include some kind of explosive device?” Sam asks bluntly.

“Sure,” Ash agrees. “Last thing to go. Why?”

“Blow it.”

There’s no response.

“Ash? Did you read me?”

“Yeah, I—I thought you told me to blow it.”

“I did.”

After another pause, Ash says, “Sam, I don’t think you understand, man. There are still people in there. The whole place locked tight when the sequence started. They can’t get out.”

Sam sees the medical level in his mind. The girl who pissed herself because Dean got too close. The guy Dean thanked for operating with an anesthetic.

“Blow the fucking building, Ash,” he repeats.

He doesn’t think Ash is even going to respond for a moment and then the hacker says, in a weak little voice, “I don’t think I can do that.”

In the background, Sam hears someone say, “Give me that,” and a second later Ellen comes in loud and clear with, “Sam, it’s Ellen. I know you told my daughter and the boy genius here not to say anything, but I also think you know something like this wasn’t going to fly under my radar.”

“I was kind of hoping it would,” Sam says, and strokes his hand down the side of Dean’s face.

“Bet you were,” Ellen replies wryly. “You got your brother back?”

“Yeah.”

“These men gonna come after you?”

Sam wants to lie: wants to tell her ‘yes, they will, they’ll hunt us until we’re both dead, and everyone who helped us as well, which means they’ll have a bullet with Jo’s name on it’. He’s too afraid she’ll hear the lie, though. “I don’t know.”

“Then leave them alone. You stuck your hand in a hornet’s nest. Hole up somewhere and give the ruckus time to die down.”

Sam swallows and then says, “I can’t let them get away with this, Ellen.”

“Revenge is an idiot’s game, Sam,” she replies. “You go down that path and you’re gonna get stuck playing one-up and you aren’t going to like where that leads. Let the law handle it.”

“There are berserkers in there. And con rits and I don’t know what else. You want me to send civilians into that?”

Ellen’s quiet for a moment and then she says, “You can’t take innocent lives. I’m sorry, Sam. It isn’t going to happen. You radio in if you need any other help, and feel free to stop by for anything you need. You and your brother are welcome as long as you want to stay.”

Sam swallows. They’re going to get away with it. Not Vincent or Bela or Hank, but the others. All the men and women who helped them do it. And there isn’t a damned thing he can do about it.

 _Yeah there is,_ he thinks. _I could leave Dean here, go down there and blow it myself._

He could, too. The power is dormant right now—used up—but it’ll be back. He could probably reach it right now if he tried hard enough. He could reach out and ignite whatever he wanted. He could leave the Arena a smoking crater in the ground.

Dean stirs a little in his sleep, whimpering, and Sam realizes that he’s gripping his brother’s hair tightly enough for it to hurt. He forces his hand to relax and then lets out a slow, shaky breath.

“Thanks for the offer, Ellen, but we—we’re gone, me and Dean. Tell Bobby thanks for everything, and—and tell him if he comes looking for us I’ll kill him. Dean’s mine. He can’t—no one’s killing him. I’m sorry, I—I’m sorry.”

He holds the button down until he gets the earpiece out of his ear—doesn’t want to hear what she has to say—and then crushes both pieces of the radio in the dirt.

Three minutes later, Dean’s sleeping body is curled up in the passenger seat of the Hummer and they’re driving north, the Arena a distant collection of lights in the rearview mirror.


	30. Damaged Goods

Sam wakes up completely disoriented. It’s dark outside, and he’s pretty sure that dawn had already broken when he pulled off the road, unable to see straight past the pain in his head and ear and too exhausted to drive further anyway. His ear still aches in a hot, throbbing kind of way, but his head feels fine. He doesn’t know what woke him.

Then it comes again: a weak tug on his sleeve.

“Sammy,” Dean slurs.

Sam sits up straighter, blinking the sleep away. “Dean. What’s—how are you feeling?”

“Shot,” Dean mumbles, and slumps back against the seat.

It’s too dark to make anything out clearly, but Sam can tell that his brother isn’t anywhere near finished healing. When he fumbles the overhead light on, he finds Dean ghastly pale with thick, dark smudges under his bleary eyes. He doesn’t look any better at all. Maybe looks a little worse.

“Shot,” Dean repeats persistently, and Sam makes himself reach into the back seat for the Gleipnir. Dean doesn’t need it, but refusing the drug is just going to upset him and right now his body doesn’t need the added stress.

“You look like shit,” Sam says as he pulls the case into his lap. “Shouldn’t you be better by now?”

“Haven’t been … can’t heal …”

“What?” Sam blurts. Jesus Christ, is the bad news _ever_ going to end?

“No … reserves … used too much … energy … can’t …” Dean licks his lips, his eyes fastened unswervingly on the syringe Sam is taking out of the case.

“Can you hang on another hour or so? I’ll try and find a hospital: they can—”

“Don’t ... need it.”

“Damn it, Dean!” Sam shouts. When Dean just keeps staring fixedly at the syringe, he touches the side of his brother’s face to get his attention and says more gently, “You’re hurt, and I’m not—I’m not letting you die. Not here. Not like this, man.”

“Such a … girl,” Dean wheezes. “Give me … shot …”

Since it looks like he’s not getting any of his brother’s attention until this is taken care of, Sam taps the glass of the syringe and asks, “Anywhere it needs to go?”

Dean rolls his head to one side, baring his neck, and Sam remembers his vision-dream. Biting the tip of his tongue in concentration, he rummages through his memories of John’s triage lessons and is for once grateful that his father was so thorough. Between the dream and his own training, he finds the place he thinks the needle is supposed to go and presses forward.

Dean’s face scrunches in a grimace and then soothes out again as Sam starts to push the plunger down. When he withdraws the needle again, there’s a flare of blue mist across his brother’s corneas. Dean leans his head back against the window and lets out a sigh that turns into a sharp coughing jag.

Sam drops the syringe and grabs his brother’s shoulder as Dean’s hand comes up to his chest—to his heart—and presses. He knows he’s gripping too hard, but he doesn’t loosen his hold until Dean’s coughs trail off into weak hiccups. Then, jaw clenched grimly, he shuts off the overhead light and sits back in his own seat.

“I’m taking you to a hospital,” he announces as he starts the Hummer’s engine.

“No.”

Sam resists the urge to shake Dean until he listens to reason and grates out, “This isn’t open to discussion.”

“Just need … something … to eat … be better … then …”

Sam shoots his brother a quick glance as he navigates back onto the road, but Dean’s expression is inscrutable in the dim glow of the dashboard. “You’re telling me that if I feed you, you’ll be able to heal?”

He more senses than sees Dean nod beside him. “McDonalds,” Dean says, and Sam can’t hold back a short laugh. He thinks his brother might be grinning at him. “Haven’t had a … burger in … six months.”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever you want.”

Sam glances over, but Dean is out again. Even though Sam knows it’s just a way of conserving energy, it’s still frightening how quickly his brother’s body is shutting itself down. He wonders how long Dean has: how long Sam has to find him some food out here in the middle of nowhere. Not long, he suspects. Not long at all.

He returns his eyes to the road and drives faster.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s Burger King instead of McDonalds, but Sam doesn’t think Dean is going to argue. He’s thankful for the darkness as he brings them around to the drive through, hyper aware of Dean's blood on his shirt and his own blood matting down the hair on the right side of his head: of Bela’s blood on his brother's face and clothes.

The kid at the window doesn’t run screaming, though; only gives Sam a weird look as he passes the three bulging bags of burgers over and asks if he’s having a party or something.

“Something,” Sam agrees, giving the kid one of the hundreds from the glove compartment. The kid runs a black marker over one side of the bill, hands him his change, and Sam pulls away with his heart hammering in his throat.

He plans to go somewhere quiet and then wake Dean up, but he’s forgotten how keen Dean’s sense of smell has gotten. He doesn’t notice the rustling at first, too flooded with adrenaline and relief that he doesn’t have to worry about police coming after them for the small sound to register.

Then Dean makes a soft, frustrated noise, and says, “Little help.”

Sam jumps and almost swerves them off the road. “Jesus Christ!” he swears.

Dean shoots him a wan smirk, still struggling to get his hands to cooperate long enough to get one of the burgers unwrapped. “Little … high strung there … dude?”

Only Dean would find the energy to be an asshole when he’s dying.

Sam pulls into the parking lot of the Exxon station to their right, parking as far from the light as he can, and then turns off the engine. He plucks the burger from his brother’s clumsy fingers and peels back the paper. Mindlessly ravenous, Dean leans over and takes a bite before Sam can even offer to hand the unwrapped burger back.

Too startled by the sudden movement to protest, Sam holds the burger while Dean makes an embarrassing moan and takes another bite. Dean licks his lips as he swallows this time, and Sam’s eyes track the motion without his permission. He really shouldn’t be finding Dean eating fast food out of his hands as erotic as he does.

“Dude, hold your food yourself,” he blurts when Dean moves in for bite number three.

Dean’s hands obediently come up to take the last of the burger back. Sam isn’t sure whether the twisting in his stomach is relieved or not. The burger is disappearing at record speeds into Dean’s mouth, though, so he doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

Sam manages to half-unwrap a second burger and then Dean is grabbing it away from him, batting the rest of the paper free, and stuffing it in his mouth. They work their way through all three bags—some thirty burgers in all—in under ten minutes, and then Dean lays back against the seat, one hand on his stomach and his eyes wistful on the wrappers strewn all over the place.

“Do you, uh, need more?” Sam asks.

Dean hesitates, biting his lower lip, and then shakes his head. “No, m’good. Gonna sleep now. Shot tomorrow. Dusk. Don’ forget.” He shifts around in his seat, getting comfortable. “Don’ wake me up, either.”

Sam remembers how dead to the world his brother was when he accidentally started healing himself in the Arena and doesn’t think that’ll be a problem. “Okay.”

Dean lets out a small sigh and curls his body against the door, making Sam neurotically reach out and hit the automatic door lock. He doesn’t want Dean accidentally grabbing the door handle in his sleep and spilling out onto the highway.

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean breathes, and then he’s out again.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam drives for almost an hour before he realizes that they have to switch cars. He isn’t worried about the Hummer being reported stolen, but someone from Vincent’s corporation must have known about the emergency escape route. And sooner or later—probably sooner, knowing their luck—someone is going to realize that Dean’s missing. They’re going to know how he got out and what transportation he’ll be using.

And Sam would be willing to bet his soul that the Hummer has some kind of tracking device on it.

They’re driving through a small town, and it’s easy enough for him to quietly jack one of the cars in the Motel 6 parking lot. He transfers everything from the Hummer to the new car—a less comfortable but far safer ’92 Volvo 740—and then, carefully, moves Dean as well. His brother sleeps through the transfer, his breath steady and stronger than it’s been since they ran into Vincent in the Arena.

Sam stops once more around three a.m. to break into a darkened, second hand clothing store to get himself and Dean a few changes of clothes. He changes in the back, tosses his bloodied clothes in the dumpster, and washes his face and hair in the bathroom sink. Then he brings a wet t-shirt out to the car and cleans Dean’s face as well, leaves two hundred in cash on store’s counter, locks the door again and pulls away.

After that, it’s smooth sailing all the way up to Quinault, WA.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam drives around Quinault for most of the afternoon looking for somewhere isolated enough to hole up for a month or so. He’s frustrated because his ear still aches like a son of a bitch, but mostly because he’s turning up nothing here and he knows of at least fifteen places across the country that would be perfect. Places that are off limits because he’d have to contact someone they know, and then Bobby would almost certainly find them.

Find Dean.

Sam is about to give in and get a normal motel room for the night when he runs into Charlie Yelm by the coffee counter in one of the five independent gas stations left in the United States. Charlie is a grizzled man with a permanent squint and a New England Yankee drawl, and he takes one look at Sam and says, “Boy, you in a whole world of trouble. You and that brother of yours you got in the car you stole.”

He’s very, very lucky that Sam left the gun in the car with Dean, and that the dark power still seems sapped from his last explosion in the Arena’s basement level.

Giving Sam a wry, toothless grin that tells him that the man knows what he’s thinking, Charlie then announces, “Missouri sent me.”

After convincing Sam—mostly—that Dean will be fine in the car, Charlie takes him to dinner. Sam still insists on getting a booth by the window, though, and he spends most of the meal staring at his brother’s motionless form in the Volvo's passenger seat.

“Eat your food, son,” Charlie tells him.

“I’m not hungry,” Sam responds absently.

Did Dean just twitch or is Sam imagining things? Maybe he should get back out there. He doesn’t want his brother waking up alone in a strange place. He’s about to get up when Charlie reaches across the table, grabs the skin on the back of Sam’s hand, and pinches.

“Ow!” Sam complains, yanking his hand away. His ear, which had been settling down, gives a pained pulse. “What the hell was that for?”

Charlie regards him with an amused expression. “Just making sure I got your attention,” he replies, and then gestures at the full plate sitting in front of Sam—steak, mashed potatoes, broccoli. “You ain’t eaten for going on two days now. Mostly ate like shit the week before that. Your brother ain’t the only one running on fumes, and you ain’t gonna do him one licka good if you pass out on him.”

Sam squares his jaw—as annoying as it is, Charlie’s right—and shovels a forkful of potato into his mouth. His stomach wakes up immediately, and he’s surprised he didn’t notice it before. Surprised he didn’t think of getting himself something when he stopped at Burger King for Dean.

Then again, he’s had other things on his mind.

“So,” he says around a mouthful of steak. “You know Missouri?”

Charlie nods.

“You guys have some kind of club?” Sam asks, and Charlie bursts out with an open laugh. Sam’s chest warms. It’s been months since he heard someone laugh and mean it.

“Ayuh, we keep in touch. Don’t have as much firepower as your lot, so we got to rely on each other for protection.”

“Safety in numbers.”

“Sure,” Charlie agrees.

“And you—you’re here to help?” This is the part Sam can’t wrap his head around.

Charlie’s jovial expression softens. “Boy, you been worked around a bit, ain’tcha? Not as much as t’other one, but …” He shakes his head.

Sam shrugs as he shovels another forkful of potato into his mouth. “Hunters aren’t—Dean and me, we’re—”

“Different is what you are,” Charlie says. “You ain’t bad, and neither is he.”

“We’re dangerous,” Sam says reluctantly. He doesn’t want to scare away the first person who’s tried to help them—really and honestly _help_ them, without the threat of death or slavery hanging over their heads—but he has to be honest. Especially since the man could just pick the truth out of his head if he tried lying.

“So’s dogs, you handle ‘em the wrong way.” Charlie pauses to take a sip of his beer, and then says, “No offense.”

Sam nods to show there isn’t any taken, and then makes himself admit, “I could be. Bad. I don’t—this thing inside me, it’s—”

“You got a solution to that, though, don’t you?”

Sam glances out the window at Dean again. Thinks of Geri saying, _‘Fix you. You save DeanMeMine, then we fix you.’_

“Maybe,” he says.

“Okay, then,” Charlie announces in a tone as though everything’s been settled in that department. Then, inclining his head at Sam’s plate, he asks, “You want some dessert?”

Sam blinks down to find that the only thing left is the steak bone. He’s still hungry enough that he’s tempted to pick it up and make sure he got all the meat off. “Uh.”

Chuckling, Charlie catches the waitress’ eyes on her way past and says, “My friend’ll have another, do ya fine.”

She gives Sam a warm, motherly look and picks up his plate. Sam thinks that if Dean were sitting here instead of him, that look would be less motherly and a whole lot warmer, and feels a sudden surge of grief. He turns his head toward the window again, blinking back tears, and Charlie gives him a few minutes of silence to collect himself.

When he feels capable of talking without crying again, he says, “Dean always took care of me. He—I don’t know if I can do this. I’m gonna screw it up.”

“Seems to me you’re doing alright by him so far. You’re here, aren’tcha?”

“Yeah, but I—I don’t—” He can’t bring himself to say it—to talk about the mental and emotional damage he has no idea how to even begin touching—but from the look in Charlie’s eyes he doesn’t need to.

They’re briefly interrupted by the waitress as she sets another plate down in front of Sam. He thanks her quietly and then waits, toying with his fork, for Charlie to say something.

“My ma told me not to go around borrowing trouble,” the old man notes simply. “It’ll find you when it wants quick enough.” He pauses for Sam’s nod of understanding, if not acceptance, and then continues, “Now. ‘Souri called me up cause she knew you two were heading this way, and I’ve got me some property in the area. Thought I’d show you up to the cabin myself, as it’s a bit set off like. Should hold you as long as you need, and no worries about any unexpected visitors showing up and poking around in your business.”

Which is an implicit promise that Bobby won’t be finding out where they are from Missouri.

“Thanks,” Sam says. It isn’t enough to convey how he feels, but he’s pretty sure from the way that Charlie ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck that he knows well enough.

“Ah, eat yer steak.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Charlie’s cabin is on the outer edge of Olympic National Park, at the end of a three-mile long dirt driveway. It’s small but well maintained, with hot and cold running water and electricity powered by a generator. There are only two rooms: the bathroom and a main living area which is separated into three obvious sections: a kitchen, a small living area complete with couch, TV and coffee table, and a bedroom. Two twin beds, which isn’t going to be the most comfortable arrangement—especially given how much Dean moves around in his sleep—but Sam can work with it.

The pantry is fully stocked with food, and the refrigerator has fresh milk and eggs inside. The freezer is filled with meat and frozen fruit and vegetables. There’s even a stack of DVDs by the TV.

This time Sam can’t quite keep a few tears from slipping down his cheeks. He scrapes at them roughly with the back of his hands as he searches for an apology, but Charlie just turns a little and pretends to be rubbing out a speck of dirt on the kitchen table.

To distract himself, Sam goes out to the car and starts bringing their things in. He leaves Dean for last again, and when he pulls his brother out into his arms, he almost hopes that he’ll get an annoyed murmur. But Dean is as still as ever, although his color does look a little better. His skin is warmer, too: not clammy the way it was before. Sam hopes that’s an indication that he’s healing.

Charlie watches Sam tuck Dean into one of the beds and then clears his throat. “I should get going if I’m gonna catch my plane,” he announces, and then tosses a set of keys over. Sam instinctively snatches them out of the air. Lays them flat on his palm and picks through them with his other hand. There are three keys, each with a plastic, color-coded tag on the end.

“Red’s for the front door, blue’ll open the gate around the genny. I don’t expect there’ll be any problems, but if there are, you just open the gate and give her a kick. Remind her who’s in charge.”

“Green?” Sam asks, holding up the key.

“That’s for my truck,” Charlie answers with a half-smile. “We’re switching up. I’ll leave the car you took parked out in front of the sheriff’s. Andy’s an old friend of mine. He’ll make sure it ends up back where it belongs without looking too hard into how it managed to make its way up here, if you ken what I mean.”

Sam’s first instinct is to press the leftover money from the hummer into the man’s hands, but he senses that Charlie would be insulted by the gesture. So instead he just sticks his right hand out. Charlie takes it with a grin.

“You need anything, you call Missouri. There’s a payphone down in town and a roll of quarters in my glove compartment.”

“Will do,” Sam says, unconsciously mimicking the man’s speech patterns.

He gets an amused chuckle in return. “You boys’ll do fine, son. Just fine.”

Sam watches Charlie pull down the dirt path and feels his sense of security slip away with the old man. It’s like watching the sun dip behind the clouds, and he realizes suddenly that it’s getting dark, and that it’s time for Dean to have his shot.

Dean sleeps through the injection: the only indication he gives that he even felt it is a tiny twitch of his fingers. Sam stands with the empty syringe in his hand, looking down at his brother, and wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do now.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In the end, there’s only one thing to do. Sam isn’t sure it’ll work with the dark power curled so deep and exhausted within him, but he has to try: partly because he needs to find out how damaged Dean really is, and partly because he’s fulfilled his part of the bargain.

Now it’s time for Geri to do the same.

He refuses to try in the cabin, though. It’s too close to Dean if the darkness in him wakes hungry for blood. He still remembers in crystal detail everything that he wanted to do to Dean—what he wanted to make of him—and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to pull back a second time. Just touching his brother's mind might be enough to set him off at this point, but he has to try.

Sam gets into Charlie’s pickup and drives further down the dirt road. He expects to come across another cabin, but instead the road dead ends four miles down at a decaying dock on the edge of a lake. Far across the other side, Sam can see a tiny flare of light that’s too fluid to be anything other than a campfire. Other than that one flicker, the night is dark and isolated and perfect.

Turning off the engine, he lies back and tries to relax. His neck is at an awkward angle, though, and there’s a heavy smell of tobacco in the cab. He’s a little too tall to recline comfortably, and his ear is still throbbing annoyingly.

All in all, Sam is sure that he’s going to lie here awake until daybreak, but less than half an hour after he closes his eyes, sleep drags him under.

He’s more aware of what he’s doing this time around, and as he drifts closer to his brother, Sam can see the brilliant blue divide running through the center of Dean’s soul. Hovering just out of range, he peers in and tries to figure out which half he wants. It’s like looking at a split-image TV screen.

One side shows his brother curled in on himself in what must be his cell in the Arena. The other has two Deans: one in the cabin bed and the other naked and standing over him in an alert, still posture. It hurts to see that Dean is dreaming himself back in the Arena, and for a moment Sam’s tempted to go to his brother and try to reassure him that he’s out, and safe, and with Sam. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to switch sides once he’s in, though, and as much as he wants to comfort Dean, talking to Geri is more important right now.

Falling into his brother’s soul with full awareness of what he’s doing is disorienting and a little painful. Sam swears, stumbling as his body reforms around him. The sound—or maybe just his abrupt appearance—draws Geri’s attention from its place by Dean’s side. When it recognizes him, the wolf relaxes and gives him a lopsided, decidedly canine smile. It doesn’t look as odd as it should on Dean’s mouth.

“SammyMate!” Geri says joyfully, and then lopes _(there’s no other word for the rangy, graceful movement)_ over to him. It’s easier with human displays of affection this time around, as though it’s been practicing, and shows no sign of hesitation at grabbing his head and kissing him.

Those are Dean’s lips on his, Dean’s scent in his nose, and Sam can’t help kissing back for a moment. Then he realizes that this might count as cheating on his brother, not to mention that whole creepy bestiality angle they have going on, and makes himself pull back. Geri makes a whining, unhappy noise and licks its lips, eyes fastened on his mouth.

“More,” it says.

“No,” Sam tells it.

“Have looked,” Geri says, flicking its eyes up coyly. “Know how.” Then, before Sam can respond, it cups him through the jeans he’s wearing.

Christ on a stick.

“No!” Sam yelps, pushing the wolf’s hand away and stepping back. “You have to fix me first, remember?”

Geri blinks at him, head cocked in puzzlement, and Sam wonders if it _does_ remember. The wolf hasn’t exactly impressed him with its intelligence during their other conversations, after all. Then Geri’s face clears. Its eyes light with a kind of wondering joy.

“Out? DeanMeMine out? Free?”

“Yeah, he’s out.”

Geri gives a happy little shuffle, grinning wider than Sam has seen his brother do in years—since before Stanford, actually. Then it looks from Dean down to its own hands, and the smile fades.

“But not … still no touch?” it asks, looking so crushed that Sam can’t help but feel sorry for it. “Why no touch? DeanMeMine free.” Its face tightens in concentration for a moment and then it adds, “ _We’re_ free.”

“The, ah, drug takes a while to wear off,” Sam lies.

Geri shifts unhappily. It stares at Dean’s sleeping body with unconcealed longing. “Soon?”

“Yeah, soon,” Sam says, and that’s truthful enough. Thanks to Bela, they’re going to run out of Gleipnir before Sam could find someone to reverse engineer any more for them even if he were looking.

The wolf cocks its head, considering, and then nods. “Soon.” When it turns back to Sam there’s a playful smile lifting its lips. “SammyMate _now_ ,” it suggests, sidling closer.

Sam steps back, exasperated by the fact that Dean managed to attract what has to be the horniest, most single-minded animal spirit ever, but slightly flattered too. It’s been a while since he so felt wanted.

“I’m still sick,” he reminds it.

Geri … pouts. Dean’s face pouting. It’s an … interesting … look on him.

“Stupid deathlessdark,” Geri grumbles.

Sam clears his throat, definitely not thinking about the way that his brother’s lips look even fuller when they’re pursed like that, and then says, “You said you could fix me, remember? It’s gotten worse since I was last here. Can you still—is it too late?”

Geri cocks its head, all sullenness slipping away and leaving something eerily alien and intent. With a flicker of gold, Dean’s body is gone and a wolf the size of a Shetland pony is staring at Sam. It pads the few feet necessary to close the distance between them and nuzzles damply at his chest.

After taking several deep, snuffling breaths, the wolf flickers again and Dean’s face is an inch away from his. Those gold eyes are more serious than Sam thinks he’s seen them on the wolf: concerned. Sam’s heart beat speeds.

“Close,” Geri says. “Can’t say forcertainsure.”

It’s bad, but not as bad as Sam feared it might be. “There’s still a chance, though?” he presses.

“Yes.”

Thank God. Sam isn’t sure what to expect, but he’s pretty sure it’s going to hurt. Bracing himself, he shuts his eyes and says, “Okay, do it.”

Nothing happens.

“Geri?” Sam tries, cracking his eyes open again.

The wolf isn’t doing much of anything but cocking its head at him.

“Aren’t you gonna … you know?” Sam makes a vague gesture with one hand. “Fix me?”

Geri’s eyes widen and it shakes its head, backing away as though it’s a Catholic priest and Sam just suggested having gay, incestuous sex on the altar in the middle of Mass. “Not me,” it says quickly. “Already have DeanMeMine. Bonded. Same soul. Two-as-one.”

Not sure what the wolf is getting at, Sam frowns. “I’m not following here. You said you could fix me.”

“Know how,” Geri corrects. “SammyMate has to become soul pack.”

“I thought you said I _was_ pack,” Sam says. He’s obviously missing something here.

“Heart pack,” the wolf agrees. “DeanMeMine pack. Need to be soul pack. Andi pack.”

And Sam understands, suddenly, what it means.

“I—” He shuts his mouth and then opens it again. “How the hell is _that_ going to help?”

“Sick,” Geri says. Now that Sam isn’t telling it to commit what apparently amounts to blasphemy among animal spirits, it steps closer again and pats his chest. “Deathlessdark wants to make SammyMate pack. Darkpack. SammyMate not strong enough to heal sickness alone. Need help. Need andi help. Two-as-one. No room for sickness. SammyMate whole.”

Sam pauses to digest that and then says, carefully and clearly, “You’re telling me that the demon blood is trying to merge with my soul, and it won’t be able to do that if I’m already bonded to something else.”

Geri nods.

“But if I’m already too far gone, then the animal spirit—the andi—won’t be able able to get a foothold,” Sam adds.

The wolf’s eyes go sad around the corners. “Yes. Will die. Deathlessdark sickness will kill. Must fight. Must be strong like DeanMeMine.”

Sam starts. “You mean—” He thinks back to his vision of his brother waking in the Arena and continues, “That’s why the demons kept trying to possess him. They were trying to kill you before you could finish bonding.”

Geri growls back in its throat and flashes those too-long teeth fiercely. “Too strong. Too close to bonding. Killed them. Am two-as-one now. Safe. No room.”

That explains why the demons at the Arena didn’t trying to possess Dean: it was already too late to kill the wolf without also losing the valuable tool Dean would have made. It doesn’t explain John, though. John accepted the bear: if Geri is telling the truth, then he should have been immune to possession.

“My dad,” Sam starts, and then stops as the wolf shifts with a furtive, guilty movement. Its eyes skitter away to one side. “How could Yellow-Eyes possess my dad?” Sam demands more firmly.

Geri blinks at him, too wide-eyed to be truly innocent. “Don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do,” Sam pushes, stepping forward. Geri falls back a pace, cringing, and he stops. What, exactly, is he planning on doing if the wolf won’t tell him? Beat a confession out of it? Dad’s dead, the demon’s dead, the whole damned subject is dead.

Sighing, he rubs at his eyes. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anymore. But I need to—if I do this, what’ll happen to me? Dean and Bobby, Pastor Jim, every hunter I’ve ever talked to—say that you guys are dangerous. Every berserker I’ve ever heard of has gone insane and had to be put down.”

“No!” Geri protests, snapping upright. “Not true. Are hunters. Hunt for food, for safety. Not for fun. Not to hurt.” Its face softens wistfully and it shuffles forward to touch the back of Sam’s hand. “Am not bad. Not wrong.” It blinks at him, all earnest energy and honesty.

It doesn’t mean anything, of course. Just because Geri thinks that it’s good doesn’t make it true. Sam doubts that the Hitlers and Mansons of the world actually consider themselves the bad guys.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and then glances past the wolf to his brother, who still looks far too pale in the bed. “Are you getting anything from him?”

Sam hates having to sneak around on Dean like this, but even if his brother were awake he’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t get any straight answers from him. And there are certain questions that Sam needs the answers to.

“Some,” Geri says, following the change of subject easily. Sam isn’t surprised: the wolf strikes him as a little prone to distraction.

“He was hurt when we were escaping. Can you tell if he’s healing all right?”

Trotting back to the bed, Geri studies the body lying there without, thankfully, trying to touch Dean. “Is sick from deathlessdark hurt,” it announces. “Heal slow, but good. Be fine.”

Sam’s glad to hear the last part, but … “He’s sick?”

“Hurt,” the wolf says, and gestures to its own eyebrow where it’s sporting a mirror to Dean’s gash from that last fight in the cage. “Deathlessdark hurt. Make sick. Harder to heal. Longer.”

“How much longer?”

Geri gives a disinterested sniff and doesn’t answer. Maybe it can’t. Sam doesn’t press the question. Dean will heal when he heals. For now, Sam is just going to have to be satisfied with knowing that his brother will eventually be okay—physically at least.

Which brings him to the question he really wants to ask: the one that he knows Dean would kill him for if he found out Sam was going behind his back like this.

“How is he doing emotionally? Mentally?”

Geri cocks its head at him.

“How does he feel inside?” Sam tries, tapping his chest with one hand.

The wolf’s expression clears and it makes a sad, whuffing noise. “Hurts. Everything is sick and dark. Like bad meat. Smells like earth. Wants to be earth.”

 _It said that before,_ Sam remembers. “What do you mean ‘wants to be earth’?” he asks.

“Earth,” the wolf repeats. And then helpfully adds, “Dead.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sam whispers.

It’s one thing to suspect that his brother is suicidal, but hearing something with a direct pipeline to Dean’s soul confirm that he is makes it real in a way that not even Dean’s meltdown in the hallway could. Because even then—even with that cold metal dimpling his brother’s forehead—part of Sam was blindly sure that Dean was just angry, that he was trying to hurt Sam, that he wasn’t serious.

“How bad?” he demands. All of a sudden, he’s acutely aware that he left Dean alone in the cabin with a loaded gun. “How bad is it?”

Geri whines. “Can’t say. No words.” The eyes it raises to Sam’s are worried. “Won’t let him? SammyMate keep DeanMeMine safe?”

“I’ll do my best,” Sam says.

He prays that will be enough.


	31. Hail Mary

When Sam wakes in the morning with a start, he knows that he’s almost out of time. His little excursion into his brother’s head has roused the darkness inside of him and he can feel it again as an eager undercurrent to his thoughts. Feeling along the edges of his defenses for any cracks it can use to worm its way deeper into his soul. Refusing to use the power anymore will stave it off for a little while, but that can only slow what’s happening. It won’t stop the darkness from taking him inch by inch, and it certainly won’t reverse the damage that’s already been done.

Sam takes a few minutes to shore up the wall in his mind, hoping to prevent any accidents, and then turns the pickup around and heads back to the cabin.

Dean is still sleeping, but his color is better. Sam turns one of his brother’s hands over and sees that the cuts on Dean’s palms are all but gone, although the gash on his brow is still there. He traces one finger across his brother’s wrist and pauses over his pulse. Not as steady as he’d like, but better than before: stronger.

He really is healing.

Replacing Dean’s hand on the bedspread, Sam takes a careful look around. Not counting the gun on the kitchen table, there are hundreds of objects in here that Dean could use on himself if he wanted: some obvious and some not quite so obvious but no less deadly. It would take days to make the place completely suicide-proof. Sam’s going to have to do his best with the time he has.

He takes the knives first. Hesitates over the forks and then takes them out as well. The cleaning supplies underneath the sink go next. He dithers over the dishes for a few minutes and then takes out everything that isn’t plastic, leaving them with two plates, four cups and a pale pink bowl with bananas on it.

The stove is gas, and will have to be turned off from outside if _(when)_ Sam leaves; Dean will still be able to use the microwave if he wants to cook something. Then Sam realizes that Dean could shove half a dozen metal cans in there and, at the very least, cause a fire. He can’t remember how to breathe for a moment.

Jesus Christ, this is impossible. There are so many ways a person could end his life if he wanted to, and Sam can’t possibly take care of them all. And this is _Dean_ , who’s resourceful enough to have made an EMF reader out of an old, beat-up Walkman. He’d probably be able to manage it locked in an empty, padded room.

Besides, there’s nothing to stop Dean from leaving, is there? There’s nothing Sam can do to prevent him from, say, wandering off to drown himself in the lake or toss himself in front of a passing car. Or he could always find Bobby and cash in on his promise.

Sam’s breath comes faster. What the fuck is he supposed to do? It isn’t like he can keep Dean in the cabin, let alone away from anything dangerous. He can’t—

Wait.

Sam blinks down at his hands, remembering. And thanks to John’s training, he _does_ remember: remembers it exactly, he’s sure of it. Dean’s going to hate him, of course, but Sam can deal with a little hate if it means his brother is still alive to yell at him.

Sam finds a package of Sharpies in one of the kitchen drawers and pulls them out. Then he studies the room, mapping out a space that will be the easiest to clear. The bathroom will have to be included, of course, but he’s fairly certain he can deal with that. He just has to empty out anything even remotely dangerous and put it in the kitchen.

Okay. Okay, he can do this.

Sam gets on his hands and knees and starts drawing. Two Sharpies and three hours later, he stands back and looks at his handiwork. The modified devil’s traps surround Dean’s bed in a circle that’s just wide enough to include the bathroom door. Sam has been careful to link the traps edge to edge—no space between for Dean to slip through—and to point the focus of the trap inward toward his brother. If he ends up taking the wolf’s advice, he’ll need some help to get through himself, of course, but he’ll cross that particular bridge when he comes to it.

It takes Sam another two hours to Dean-proof the bathroom. He takes everything away but the half roll of toilet paper, a bar of soap, a small bottle of shampoo _(nontoxic: he checked)_ , and a tube of toothpaste. No toothbrush: Sam has seen enough prison movies to know that a toothbrush can be snapped and the handle filed into a serviceable weapon. If Dean wants to brush his teeth, then he can make do with his finger for a few days. Even the mirror comes down: far too easy for Dean to break it and use one of the shards as an impromptu knife.

Sam still doesn’t feel secure. He knows that he’s probably just being neurotic, but what if the modified devil’s traps won’t work on the floor? What if they’re specifically designed to lock things closed, like doors or windows? After a few minutes of gnawing on his lower lip, he heads outside.

There’s a can of waterproof paint in the shed out back. Sam can’t find a brush, but his finger works just as well. He does the cabin door first, and the all of the windows. After a moment of hesitation, he climbs up on the roof and leaves a trap there as well.

When he climbs back down, he’s covered with streaks of paint. Droplets of sweat fly from his hair when he shakes his head, and his shirt is stuck to his back and chest. He wonders absently if the heat is normal for this part of the world in late September. Maybe. He can’t be sure: their treks from one side of the country to the other have never taken them this far into the northwest.

After returning what’s left of the paint to the shed, Sam goes back inside.

Dean’s awake.

He’s sitting up in the bed and looking around at the symbols he can see on all the windows. Sam isn’t sure if his brother has noticed the floor yet, and he can’t read the answer in Dean’s expression because when Dean looks at him, his face is completely neutral. Dean takes in the brown coating on Sam’s hands—the streaks on his face and arms and clothes—and doesn’t say anything.

Sam closes the door behind himself, not bothering to lock it. He doesn’t need to lock it, and they both know it.

“I’m not apologizing,” he says.

Dean’s stare is unnerving. It doesn’t waver: doesn’t fluctuate in intensity. There’s no hint of what’s going on in that screwed up head of his.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Sam adds.

Dean stares at him for a moment longer and then says, “You’re gonna have to open the door eventually.”

So, he hasn’t noticed the floor. Heart beating too quickly in his chest, Sam reaches behind him and opens the door. He can always slam it shut again if Dean makes it past the traps surrounding his bed. Dean’s healed, but he still looks too weak to use one of those inhuman bursts of speed to escape, so Sam should have enough time to do that much.

Suspicion flickers through Dean’s eyes as he gets out of the bed. Keeping his gaze focused on Sam, he takes two steps forward and then stops. Looks down. Looks up. His jaw twitches.

“You son of a bitch.”

Sam stands there quietly while Dean paces along the line of traps. It’s almost exactly like watching wolves at the zoo. Dean disappears into the bathroom and then comes out a few minutes later with a bitter smile on his face.

“What, you weren’t worried I was gonna choke myself on the soap?”

“I didn’t go through all that to lose you.”

“In two weeks you’re gonna lose me either way, Sam!” Dean shouts. “Or are you gonna keep me here, huh? You gonna keep me here and throw me a few table scraps now and then? Get yourself a collar and a leash and take me for fucking walks in the woods?”

Sam winces internally at the anger in his brother’s voice. “You don’t need the Gleipnir, Dean,” he says softly. “The wolf isn’t a problem. You aren’t going to turn into some kind of bloodthirsty monster.”

Uttering a wild laugh, Dean drops down on the bed and puts his head in his hands. His fingers flex in his hair. “God, you—I don’t even know what to say to you right now.”

Sam shuts the door again and heads into the kitchen. His chest feels about three sizes too small to hold his insides, and his stomach is twisting restlessly. “You hungry?” he asks. “I can make us some lunch.” Then, glancing at the clock, he corrects himself. “Dinner.”

“Let me out of here, Sam,” Dean says without looking up.

“We’ve got some steaks, if you want. Or burgers? Did you want another burger?”

“ _Sam_.” Quiet. Dangerous.

The darkness inside of Sam pulses in eager response. Shutting his eyes, he rests his hand on the refrigerator door and concentrates on the slight thrum in his fingertips. The darkness is more restless now that Dean’s awake. Hungrier. It wants to hurt him.

Break him.

Kill him.

 _No_ , Sam thinks. _Jesus no._

At this rate, he has as many as five days left before he’s completely gone. Maybe as few as two. And even if he takes the wolf’s advice tonight, it could be take three days for something to answer.

It could already be too late.

“I’m not letting you out, Dean,” Sam says. Funny how he’s falling apart inside and yet his voice sounds completely normal. “If you don’t tell me what you want for dinner, you’re gonna be stuck with whatever I’m having.”

“You fucking asshole,” Dean says.

Sam takes a deep breath and then nods. “Okay, burgers it is.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“You want to watch a movie?” Sam asks. It’s a peace offering of sorts, spoken in the hope that this—what is possibly their last evening together—can at least have some small spark of good in it. Dean’s flat glare as he nudges his burger around on the Styrofoam plate tells Sam it isn’t going to happen.

Sam lifts his own burger and takes a bite. In the hostile silence, the meat seems overcooked and tasteless. He swallows with difficulty and then gets up and looks through the DVDs. They’re mostly tasteless B horror flicks—the kind Dean always used to get a hoot out of—and a couple of Nicholson classics. Missouri’s advice, probably.

After a moment’s deliberation, Sam pops Batman into the DVD player and turns on the TV. Dean remains sullenly silent until the opening strains of music and then he grunts, “If you’re gonna put something on, at least fix the fucking reception.”

Sam slowly glances over his shoulder, not sure if Dean is fucking with him. But Dean looks genuinely cross, and he makes a sharp, ‘get on with it already’ gesture at Sam.

“The picture’s fine, man,” Sam says.

“What’re you, blind? It’s just a bunch of colored lines.”

Sam knew his brother’s eyesight had to have improved to keep up with his new speed, but this … this is verging on ridiculous.

“You can’t see the picture?” he probes.

“What are you, deaf as well as blind?”

Sam realizes that now isn’t a great time to tell Dean that the problem isn’t with the TV: it’s that his eyes have gotten too good—too fast—for the technology to work.

“Actually, my ear’s feeling better,” he says. “Thanks for asking.” His voice is biting with the fear that Dean will figure out what’s happening on his own if Sam lets him think about it long enough. Getting up again, he walks over and snaps off the TV. “And you’re right: the set’s broken.”

“You’re hurt? What’s wrong?”

Sam turns around and Dean is right up at the edge of the symbols on the floor, his face stern with worry. He’s pissed at Sam—has been pissed since he woke up—but the second there might be anything at all wrong with his precious little brother, Dean’s own feelings get shoved to the back. Unimportant.

It pisses Sam off and saddens him at the same time. He can’t do this anymore. Can’t handle Dean’s neurosis and hold off his own impending panic at the same time.

It’s getting late anyway. If Sam is really going to do this, then he has to leave soon. Good thing he cleaned himself up before burning the burgers in Charlie's battered frying pan.

“I’m fine,” he says dismissively, bringing his plate into the kitchen and setting it on the edge of the sink.

“Bullshit. Get over here and let me look.”

Sam ignores his brother and opens the pantry. He starts pulling out boxes—crackers, cereal, Ring Dings—and tossing them over onto Dean’s side of the cabin. Dean dodges the first few and then just stands there, looking from Sam to the growing litter of food and back again with dawning comprehension.

When Sam starts tossing bottled water—he doesn’t trust what comes out of the pipes, and apparently neither does Charlie—Dean snaps, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“I have some things to do, and no, we’re not talking about it. I should be back in a few days. If I’m not—if I’m not, then I’m sorry.”

“What the hell, dude?” Dean demands, eyes wide. “You’re freaking me out here.”

Sam glances around and spots the case of Gleipnir on the counter. _Glass_ , he thinks, remembering the shattered shards stuck in Dean’s palms, and, _he doesn’t need it anyway_.

But Dean _thinks_ he needs it, and Sam just can’t do that to his brother. He can’t take himself and the Gleipnir away from Dean at the same time. At this point, he’s pretty sure that Dean is worried enough about him that he won’t do anything stupid anyway. Not without knowing what happened to Sam first.

Walking over to the edge of the traps, he holds out the case. “Take it.”

“No,” Dean says. Scowling, he backs up.

Sam sighs. “I’m leaving either way, Dean. I don’t think you need it, remember?”

Dean hesitates a moment longer and then takes the case. “Don’t do this, Sam. Just—stay here, okay? Roll the TV over here, and I’ll fix it, and we can watch Batman, okay? _Okay?_ ”

Dean’s eyes are wide: green lightened to jade by desperation and fear. Sam meets his brother’s gaze and wants to kiss him. If this is the last time he’s ever going to see Dean, then he wants to do that much. His chest aches with how much he wants it. But he knows that if he moves close enough to kiss his brother, then he’s also going to be close enough for Dean to grab. Dean isn’t above yanking him across the line and sitting on him so that he can’t go anywhere.

And that would kill them both.

“I love you, Dean, okay?” Sam offers hoarsely. “I—I love you, and none of this is your fault.”

“Sammy, _please_ ,” Dean begs.

Sam bolts, sprinting for the door and wishing that he was deaf. Then he wouldn’t hear his brother’s shouts, alternating between angry and frantic. He slams the door behind him and realizes, quite suddenly, that he can’t leave yet. Squaring his jaw, he goes back to the shed and retrieves the paint. He’s more practiced at devil’s traps, but they’re ten times harder for him to complete than the ones meant to contain his brother. It hurts to finish each symbol, almost as if he’s leaving little pieces of himself behind in the paint.

When Sam does the first window—when his brother realizes what he’s painting there—Dean goes haywire. Sam can see his brother pacing the confines of the traps around the bed and bathroom through the windows as he paints. Dean’s shouts redouble both in volume and violence: threats and abuse that aren’t fueled by anger but by panic.

Sam does his best to ignore it, but between Dean and the pain wracking his body, he’s crying by the time he’s finished. With the sound of Dean’s shouts in his ears— _get back here, you stupid shit_ —he tosses the near-empty paint can into the back of the pickup and climbs into the cab. A moment later, he pulls away in a spit of dust and rocks.

In the red burn of the setting sun, the paint smearing his hands looks like blood.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam heads into town first. He buys a rabbit at the pet store, listening calmly to the instructions on care and feeding and nodding when he’s supposed to. He even buys a bag of feed to go with the carry out cage. The clerk seems like a nice girl and he doesn’t want to upset her.

Making a circuit of the town’s hardware stores and groceries, he fills the bed of the pickup with firewood. Buys a shovel and some kerosene and some matches and puts them in the cab with him. Then he drives to the payphone Charlie told him about.

He fiddles with the cord for a few minutes, trying to build up his courage, and then decides to check his cell phone messages one last time. The first five are mostly incoherent shouting from Bobby. The next one is from Jo and makes Bobby’s messages look tame. Then there’s one from Ellen apologizing for Jo and telling Sam to stop this nonsense and come see them, that they’ll figure something out. Then a final message from Bobby. Sam is about to delete that without listening to it, but he catches the first few words and hesitates.

The man called him from Bela’s apartment.

“…that book you told me about,” Bobby is saying. “The Bible. I don’t know what line she fed you, Sam, but I’ve looked through it and there isn’t anything about a cure. The whole damned thing reads like a Jim Jones ad for Kool-Aid, if you know what I mean.”

There’s a huffing breath and then Bobby says gently, “Come on home, Sam. Let your brother have a few days of rest before the end. Don’t drag him around looking for something that isn’t there. We’ll see him out, and then we’ll figure out how to help you.”

Then there’s another pause, and this time when Bobby’s voice comes, Sam’s pretty sure that the man is crying. “Where did it all go wrong?” Bobby asks. “Just—when did everything get so far out of whack? I can’t wrap my head around it.” He pauses again, exhaling slowly, and then says simply, “Come home, son. I’ll be waiting.”

Sam erases the message and stands there staring at the payphone. Is that what he’s doing? Drinking the Kool-Aid? He drops his head forward and leans it against the cool metal in the dying light. Bela lied to him about the protection wards. Of course. He should have smacked her one with the butt of his gun and taken the book. Read it himself. He should have done a lot of things.

 _Hindsight_ , he thinks humorlessly, and dials Missouri.

“Hello, Sam,” she says immediately when she picks up the phone.

“Thanks for sending Charlie. He was—I don’t know what I would have done without him.” He hesitates for a second and then adds, “And tell him I’m sorry about the cabin. He’s going to have to repaint it.”

“He won’t mind none,” Missouri assures him. “And that isn’t what you called for, is it?”

“No. No, I’m—I’m about to do something incredibly stupid, but I don’t really have any other options.”

He pauses, maybe hoping for her to tell him that there _are_ other options: to point him down some unseen path where things can go back to the way they were before Stanford, when he and Dean were normal. Then he laughs at himself silently. As if he and Dean were ever normal.

When Missouri doesn’t say anything, Sam clears his throat and continues, “I left Dean at the cabin. If things go right, I’ll be back there within four days, but if they don’t, I—” He draws up short and then admits, “I’ll still probably be back there, but it won’t be for anything good. Um. If you—will you be able to tell which it is? From where you are?”

“I think so.”

“Okay then. Okay. If I’m—if it’s wrong, then I need you to tell Bobby Singer what happened and tell him where the cabin is.” That will probably kill Dean as well, of course, but Sam’s pretty sure that Dean won’t survive him for very long anyway.

“If I’m okay, then I’ll need someone to let me in and Dean out.”

“You’re a good man, Samuel Winchester,” Missouri says with a hint of a smile in her voice. “Your brother too.”

Sam smiles slightly himself. “He thinks you hate him,” he says, remembering the conversation that he and Dean had after the incident with the poltergeist in Lawrence.

Missouri chuckles. “He just needs a stern hand every once in a while. Pulls him out of feeling so worthless to get a little riled up.”

Sam knows that. He’s seen Dean forget that he isn’t worthy, or good enough, or whatever he tells himself. In the middle of hunts, usually, when the adrenaline is flowing and he’s doing what he was trained to do—what he was _born_ to do, if Sam wants to be honest. Anger will do it every time, as Missouri just pointed out. Sex … sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends on the person, or the sex itself, or maybe just the phase of the moon.

“I’m gonna fix him,” Sam says.

He feels slightly foolish making the announcement, but Missouri just says, “I know you are, honey. He’ll fix you right back.”

Sam frowns. “I’m okay.”

“Oh, Sam,” Missouri says fondly. “Of course you are. Now you’d best get going if you’re gonna make your deadline.”

Sam lifts his eyes and the sky is that deep, purple color where dusk is just edging into night. Missouri's right: he's running out of time.

“Thank you. For everything.” It isn’t nearly enough, but Sam trusts her to hear everything he means. Everything he can’t put into words.

“You thank me by coming through this, boy.”

Missouri hangs up without saying it, but Sam must be a little psychic himself, because he hears her ‘good luck’ loud and clear.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He gets Charlie’s truck stuck twice while driving off the road and deep into an uninhabited, untrailed patch of Olympic National Park. The first time he manages to free it on his own, but the second he has to chance another slap of power. The darkness surges up willfully and explodes outward in a rush that Sam is powerless to stop and can only channel. This far from Dean, forcing it back into place is easier than it has been for days, and moments later Sam is leaning on the back gate of the pickup and staring in horror at the burnt, ruined swath of land that stretches out before him.

The darkness chuckles at his dismay until it realizes that he can use the destruction as a kind of rudimentary road. Then it shuts up in a sulk. Sam marvels that he ever could have thought that cruel, cold voice was actually part of him. It _sounds_ like him sometimes—speaks in his voice when it makes whispered suggestions and demands in his head—but it has the yellow-eyed demon written all over it.

 _I killed you once, you son of a bitch,_ he thinks at it. _Twice should be a piece of cake._

 _All talk and no follow though, Sammy,_ the darkness whispers back. This time it’s his father’s voice: the only voice that the demon ever spoke to him with when it was alive. _You and me, we’re gonna do great things together._

“Fuck you,” Sam mutters, and pushes the pick up a little harder.

After about a mile, he leaves the destruction at a tangential path, driving carefully and with his brights on in order to avoid getting stuck again. He’s worried that park services will send someone to investigate the burn and he’d rather not be found naked in front of a bonfire when they do.

Finally, he finds the perfect spot: a natural clearing with trees high enough on all sides to block the sight of his fire but not so close that there’s any real danger of them catching. Enough of a clearing that some of the moon’s rays will reach his skin. He doesn’t need a full moon for the ritual—it just needs to be visible in the sky—but it’s close to full anyway tonight: hanging low and pregnant just above the treetops.

Backing the pickup into position, Sam tumbles the firewood out from the bed. When it’s all unloaded, he relatches the gate and moves the truck out of the way again.

The ground is soft enough that it only takes a few minutes to dig the fire pit, and then Sam tosses the shovel to one side and starts building the bonfire’s frame. When he’s done, he stacks the leftover wood off to one side: close enough that he’ll be able to feed the bonfire but far enough that it won’t catch accidentally.

There are more than enough loose leaves and twigs lying around to fill the bonfire’s center, and then all that’s left is to get it going. It’s cheating to use kerosene, but Sam doesn’t have time to coax the wood into a steady burn. Dousing everything thoroughly, he lights a match and tosses it into the frame’s center.

Sam waits until the fire is burning steadily and then heads back to the pickup, striping his shirt off as he goes. His shoes and socks go next, and then his pants. He stands next to the pickup’s cab, clad only in his boxers, and hesitates.

He isn’t really doing this, is he? This is fucking insane. All that he’s going to accomplish here is replacing one form of madness with another.

Except Sam doesn’t really believe that anymore. God help him, he _likes_ Geri. He trusts it. And the wolf more than likes him, which is sort of embarrassing and a lot weird, and he’s doing this.

He’s doing it for Dean.

Sam slides his boxers off and stands there naked. He glances around once, half expecting someone to bound out from the wilderness and haul him downtown for public nudity, and then tosses them into the cab with the rest of his clothes. He pulls the rabbit out of the cage and cradles it against his chest. Its heart is beating too quickly, making him think of another rabbit: long dead from fear and given an abbreviated funeral by John Winchester’s boys.

Stroking its ears softly, he whispers, “Sorry, buddy. I’ll make it quick.”

The rabbit flicks an ear at Sam and he’s suddenly glad that he wasn’t paying attention when the store clerk told him what sex it was. He’s having enough trouble already. Funny, he’s easily killed half a dozen people—a hell of a lot more than that if you count the bodies the demons were wearing—and he’s balking now. Over a bunny rabbit.

Sam walks back over to the fire and kneels before it. Stray twigs and rocks poke his knees uncomfortably, and he shifts a bit before giving it up as useless. The moon is still overhead, but it kisses the branches on the other side of the clearing now, almost out of view.

Sam clears his throat and starts to speak.

He stumbles a few times—the language is heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue—but he always picks up the thread again. He went over these words too many times while looking for a loophole for Dean not to know them pretty much inside out. He has one moment of panic when he forgets the Old Norse word for ‘spirit’—the word that is switched out in the altered ritual for the name of the animal the berserker wants to call—and then he remembers his latest conversation with the wolf.

“ _And_ ,” he breathes out, relieved. “ _Ek kalla and_.”

This is the hard part. Sam looks down at the rabbit in his hands and it’s looking at the woods around them: twitching its nose and terrified of the fire, of Sam’s hands, of everything.

He brings the rabbit to his mouth, twists its head back, and bites down. It claws at him and it hurts, but Sam is more concerned with the sickening copper rush on his tongue. His stomach rebels against the warm flood of blood. His throat locks and he starts to gag. The rabbit’s struggles are already slowing; its hind legs kick in a disoriented, lazy manner.

Closing his eyes, Sam focuses on the sting of the scratches on his chest and forces his throat to work.

The blood is slick going down: both thinner and hotter than Sam thought it would be. He drinks until there’s no more flow and then drops the rabbit’s body and hunches forward, one hand going to press against his stomach where harsh, painful cramps are ripping through him.

 _I will not puke, I will not puke,_ he thinks desperately, clenching his jaw shut tightly enough that his muscles spasm in protest. Finally, the urge passes and the pains in his stomach lessen. He’s still nauseous, but he isn’t going to throw up if he opens his mouth.

“ _Ek gefa mik sal til andinum_ ,” he rasps. “ _Bein, bloð, sarar moðanna. Ek kalla þik_. ”

The fire explodes towards him, and even though he’s expecting it, Sam can’t help but flinch. The flame engulfs him, sinking inside of his soul and taking his measure: noting every strength and fault. He feels it hesitate as it scrapes across the darkness and has a moment of fear that he’ll be rejected before he even gets a chance to try fighting. Then the flame withdraws and is gone, roaring up and away and into the night.

Sam kneels with blood on his mouth and down his throat and in his stomach and shakes. That’s it, then. There’s no stopping now: no take backs or do overs. He’s in this until something comes for him.

Sam doesn’t expect anything to come tonight, of course, so he’s surprised when he senses a presence just outside the firelight. Then he realizes what _part_ of him is doing the sensing and realizes that he should have expected something like this. He opens his mouth, readying to grab the power inside of him and thrust with it, and a woman’s voice comes smoothly out of the darkness, “I come in peace. Or something.”

Despite himself, Sam hesitates. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because you could blast me to pieces where you kneel and we both know it,” the woman’s voice replies easily.

“Fair enough,” he agrees. “Don’t get too close, though.”

The demon that moves into the firelight is wearing the body of a park ranger—probably the closest thing it could grab. It eyes him up and down and raises one eyebrow. “My, aren’t you a big boy?”

Sam remembers that he’s naked and is filled with the urge to run to the car for some clothes. He’s supposed to stay naked for as long as the ritual takes, though, so he makes himself sit where he is. He’s an adult and a Winchester. He can handle a little demon ribbing.

“What do I call you?” he asks.

She gives him a slow smile as she sits down next to him, toeing the rabbit’s body into the fire. “You can call me Ruby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ek kalla and_ ............................... I summon a spirit  
>  _Ek gefa mik sal til andinum_ ............................... I give my soul to the spirit  
>  _Bein, bloð, sarar moðanna_ ............................... (By) blood, (by) bone, (by) the wrath of the wounded  
>  _Ek kalla þik_ ............................... I summon you


	32. The Brenna

“Okay. Ruby. What do you want?”

She tilts her head. “You’re making a mistake.”

Sam can’t help but laugh. “Oh, man, you’re gonna have to do better than that.”

“How much of the sales pitch do you want?” she asks.

“Give me the short version.”

“Okay. The short version.” She kicks her legs out in front of her and crosses her ankles. Lounging. “You do this, and the world is going to die screaming, and you and Dean are going to spend a long, _long_ time as the personal playthings of someone who makes Azazel look like a kindergartener with a bad temper. That short enough for you?”

“And me becoming some kind of demon lackey is going to stop that, huh?” Sam asks, not trying to keep the skepticism from his voice.

“Oh, please,” Ruby scoffs. “You already know you aren’t meant to be anyone’s lackey.”

Yeah, Sam kind of got that when he sent fifty-odd demons up in a puff of smoke. But he shrugs. “I don’t really know what you guys want with me.”

“Okay, first? There is no ‘you guys’. Demons are about as united as humans are. Everyone’s got an agenda, and the grunts are just keeping their heads down trying to survive.”

“Is that what you are? A grunt?” He’s trying to piss her off—hoping for a reason to end the conversation—but she just fixes him with a steady look.

“Why, are you hiring?” The way she’s holding her body—the tilt of her eyebrows: her lips—makes the question half-challenge, half-come on.

The darkness stretches in response and Sam digs his hands into the earth, stomach turning. “The day I work with _any_ of you lying, twisted—”

“Let’s skip the name-calling,” Ruby interrupts. All hints of the seductress are suddenly gone, leaving her almost sexless as she levels a dark-eyed look at him. “Here’s the deal. Someone’s coming. Someone big. Almost as big as they get down below. She gets hold of your world, and Hell is going to start looking a lot more appealing.”

“This big shot have a name?” Sam asks.

He doesn’t expect her to actually tell him, but she says in a soft, almost fearful, voice, “Lilith.”

“ _The_ Lilith? As in Adam’s first wife?”

“She’d like people to think so, anyway. She could be. She’s strong enough to be that old.”

“And she’s on her way here.” Sam doesn’t want to believe it, but he does. He’d know if Ruby were lying to him.

“Scratching at the gate,” Ruby agrees, tossing her hair. It’s an oddly human gesture. “She’s going to find a way out eventually, and when she does—”

“Rain of toads, fire from the heavens, yeah I got it. What I _don’t_ get is how you think I have anything to do with it.”

“If you accept your true potential, you’ll be strong enough to fight her,” Ruby tells him, leaning forward with an earnest expression. “I can help you—keep you from turning too far. I can help you remember what it’s like to be human.”

“What about Dean? Whenever I use this—this thing, I want to kill him.”

“I can help with that, too,” Ruby promises. “All you have to do is accept who you are, and I can fix everything. You get to save the world and keep Dean while you do it. Even you have to admit that’s one hell of a bargain, Sam.”

It is. On the surface, anyway. But if these last few weeks have taught him nothing else, it’s that taking things at surface value is a good way of winding up dead.

“What would you get out of it?” Sam asks.

She fixes him with a sardonic look. “As the right-hand girl of the new world order? I don’t know, what do _you_ think I’d get out of it?”

Sam is familiar with the concept of alternate realities, each one spawned by the incalculable turnings a single event can take. He has seen those worlds in his nightmares, where that final confrontation with the yellow-eyed demon went so many different ways. What he sees now are less a work of his imagination and more a product of the boiling, dark power inside of him.

He tells Ruby yes, but not even she is stronger than the ancestral hatred between demon and berserker. He rips Ruby apart when she tries to stop him, and then spends five days amusing himself with Dean. He would have played longer, but he takes a little too long scrounging up some more toys to use, and when he comes back Dean has somehow managed to claw out his own throat with his broken fingers. Too bad, so sad. Sam leaves the body where it lies and heads out to have some _real_ fun.

Or;

He tells Ruby yes, and when the darkness takes him, he forgets everything but the desire to break the pretty, defenseless world around him. Ruby shows him how. She teaches him to laugh again, and to smile, and to enjoy himself. He loses compassion, and kindness, and love, but he doesn’t miss them. He doesn’t even miss his brother, dead years past at Bobby Singer’s hand.

Or;

He tells Ruby yes, and she reins him in when they go to reclaim Dean. Dean rolls over, letting Sam do anything he wants, which isn’t all that surprising. He’s been rolling over for Sam his whole life, after all. It takes Sam years to realize that Ruby is moving Dean’s body like a puppet: making him lie with everything but his eyes.

Turns out she can even do that, given enough motivation and time to practice.

Or;

He tells Ruby yes, and Dean comes with them to make sure that ‘the bitch’ doesn’t turn Sam into something he’s not. They don’t fuck. They can’t even touch without Sam needing Ruby to calm him down, but that’s okay. Because he’s got Dean by his side for four good years until Lilith shows up. When she kills Sam, it’s with Dean lying chained and naked and bloody at her feet.

Or;

He tells Ruby yes, and she fulfills all of her promises. Dean is resistant at first—keeps shying away even when Sam promises that it’s okay, that he won’t hurt him, that he loves him, so beautiful, Dean, so lovely—but eventually he learns better. Eventually, it turns out, even Dean can learn to submit.

There are more visions—too many to count, too many to properly see. A trillion different shades of darkness and pain and in all of them, Dean dies. Dean dies horrible, bloodied deaths. Dean’s _mind_ dies but his body keeps going, pliant and unresisting under Sam’s hands. Dean dies, again and again, and he is broken and mutilated and no no NO.

“No,” Sam whispers.

“I don’t think you understand what’s at stake here, Sam,” Ruby says, frowning.

Still shaken by the visions—God, some of them were so _real_ —Sam scrubs a hand across his face. “No,” he repeats more firmly. And then, meeting her eyes, he adds, “And you can take that body back where you found it and then go back to Hell.” He pushes when he says it, just a little, and Ruby’s eyes go wide and frightened as she stands up and starts off out of the firelight.

“And stay there!” Sam shouts after her. He isn’t sure how long that command will work—probably not long at all after he gets rid of the darkness within him—but it’s worth a shot, anyway. One less demon running around topside is always a good thing.

He makes himself wait until Ruby has had enough time to get a long way off and then moves to the edge of the firelight and pukes. He can still see Dean’s broken, abused body in his mind: Dean violated in every way Sam could have imagined—and in some he couldn’t, although now they’re on loop in his mind in vivid Technicolor.

He pukes until his stomach is empty, and it’s red, and it’s blood. _Dean_ , he thinks, and, _I won’t_.

But he’s deathly afraid that it’s too late, and he will.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sometime around noon the next day, Sam finally feels warm again. He isn’t calm, but the images in his head have lost their vividness. He sits by the fire that hasn’t needed any more wood or tending since it let out that burst of flame and waits. It’s boring, but at least he has animals to watch. Dean is stuck staring at the walls of the cabin, and he has no idea what’s happening to Sam.

Sam chews on his lip. Would Dean have been more upset or less if he knew what Sam was going to do? More, probably. Best that Sam didn’t say anything.

The most exciting thing that happens that day is a squabble between two squirrels over a pinecone. Sam’s bored enough that he picks sides and tosses a pine cone of his own into the fire when his squirrel loses, but nervous enough that he can’t sleep.

Then night returns, bringing his fears with it. He gets as close to the fire as he can and thinks of Dean, wide awake in the cabin. He wonders if Dean is angry, or if he’s just worried, and digs a hole in the ground with his heel.

Fills it in with his other heel.

Digs it out again.

God, this is boring.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam walks around a little the next day, but he can’t go far. Whenever he moves more than ten feet from the fire his skin goes suddenly, icily cold, even though it’s warm enough for the air to be thick with bugs. It’s strange, he realizes, but there aren’t any bugs in the clearing. By all rights, Sam should have been investigated by ants and spiders and beetles of all types by now. Mosquitoes, certainly. But there’s been nothing.

Now that he’s aware of the phenomenon, he watches for it.

Birds that seem to be flying in a direct line over the clearing will swerve to one side or the other for no apparent reason. Swarms of gnats stream around it like the water of a fast-running river parting around rocks. A squirrel—maybe one of the two he watched yesterday—prepares to bound across the clearing and then skitters back into the cover of the trees as if the ground is electrocuted.

Sam would say it’s just the instinctual fear of fire at play, but he doesn’t really think that’s the reason. He can’t smell the fire anymore, for one, and while it gives off plenty of light it isn’t hot. He’s pretty sure he could walk through it and come out the other side unsinged. Not sure enough to _try_ it, but pretty sure.

No, the wildlife is avoiding the clearing for some other reason. It’s as if they can sense what Sam is doing: as if the ritual has changed the clearing in some vital way.

 _Hallowed ground_ , Sam thinks.

The phenomenon is interesting for a few hours or so and then he’s back to being bored again.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A second night and Sam still hasn’t slept. He doesn’t feel any inclination to, either. In the night, the darkness inside of him whispers. It promises him things—power, knowledge, Jess, Dad … But most of all, Dean.

 _He’ll love you_ , it tells him.

 _He needs to be controlled: tamed._

 _He’ll feel so good, and he’ll never come to you otherwise. He’s too broken._

That last one hits a little too close to home. Dean has been hurt, and Sam doesn’t know if his brother is ever going to want anything physical between them. He reminds himself that it doesn’t mean Dean won’t love him: that he’ll have his brother’s love, which is more than he ever thought he’d get. But Sam is still young, and he can’t deny he wants more—wants everything he glimpsed in that dream they shared over and over again: wants it for real.

Oh God, the temptation …

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s the third day. Sam thinks that the quiet and the solitude may be driving him crazy. He wonders why he hasn’t gotten hungry yet, or tired.

He wonders how Dean is.

And he waits.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Sixty-four bottle of beer on the wall,” Sam sings. He’s lying on his back staring up at the night sky, and the darkness is back full force. He’s singing in an attempt to drown it out, but it isn’t working very well.

 _…so warm and tight. He needs it: needs you to tell him what to do. He’s always needed it, hasn’t he? So subservient, always wanting to please you, and he can—he can be **very** pleasing …_

Damned thing has been singing in the same key since the sun went down: wrapping its oily, suggestive voice around Dean’s name and filling him with thoughts of Dean on his back, bent over a table, up against the wall. Dean held down by Sam’s hands, tied up in silk scarves, chained in gold. Dean begging for it, and panting, and sweat-slick, and trembling, and beautiful.

Sam’s been hard and aching since word one.

 _…want him riding you? Want to watch all those toned muscles work while he fucks himself on you? He’ll do it. He’ll do all of it, Sammy: you just need to give in. Accept who you are and you can have him. You can have that pretty, pretty mouth anytime you want …_

“Sixty-six bot—goddamn it!”

The darkness laughs at him and retreats a little. And really, it can afford to: if Sam can’t even concentrate enough to get through one round of the most repetitive song in existence, then he’s dangerously close to giving in.

All it will take is one word. One nod. One single, tiny surrender and it’ll all be over.

Sam clenches his hands into fists and starts to sing.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall …”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He isn’t going to make it until morning.

Sam can feel himself slipping. He’s leaving bloody fingernail marks behind, but he’s going. He’s listening to the darkness more than he’s trying to ignore it. Wondering if it would be so bad, making Dean his. Maybe he can use the power to fix his brother: to make Dean not hurt so much inside anymore. That’s got to be good, right? Sam doesn’t have to let the power use him.

 _That’s right, Sammy_ , the darkness soothes. _You’re in charge. Whatever you say goes. We can make that happen together. Anything you want. Anyone you want._

 _Dean,_ Sam thinks. _I want Dean._

 _He’s yours,_ the darkness purrs, sliding closer. _Every last bit of perfect, freckled skin. Every last fleck of lime in those pretty green eyes._

 _Mine_ , Sam thinks, staring at the stars. There’s a new constellation there in the shape of a ginkgo leaf. _My Dean._

He doesn’t understand what he’s seeing at first. He thinks it’s a meteor or a comet, but it’s subtly the wrong color—gold instead of white light—and it’s coming … it’s coming for _him_.

Sam scrambles to his feet and backs away from the fire as the gold streak of light flares down from the night sky and dashes itself into the heart of the fire. The darkness isn’t whispering to him anymore. Now it’s hissing, angry and territorial and … and frightened? Yes, Sam thinks it is.

He can think more clearly now that the darkness isn’t so totally focused on him, and there’s enough of him left to be curious what kind of animal is going to come toward him out of the fire. A bear like Dad’s? A wolf, like Dean? Snake, hawk, fox, tiger, owl? He’s fairly certain that, whatever it is, it will be a hunter. He’s killed too much to attract anything else.

The fire doesn’t so much part as it changes, condensing into a blistering hot golden light that’s too bright for Sam to look at directly. He averts his eyes, backing further away, and trips over one of the many holes he dug in the ground while he was waiting.

 **::You called. I came.::**

No, that isn’t what it says.

 **::DeanbrothermateSamSammyJohnsonhunterthinkerwoundeddark called. Slyeststalkerfastestrunneragiletrackerquiethunterstriketheneckandbreakthebackwoundeddark came.::**

 _That’s_ what it says.

“You, uh. Your name is longer than mine,” Sam says intelligibly, still shielding his eyes.

 **::Yes. I am older.::** It sounds mildly amused. **::Look.::**

Sam tries and then winces away. God, the light the thing is giving off is burning his retinas. “I don’t think I can,” he whispers.

 **::If you can not look, then there is no hope of bonding,::** comes the implacable reply. **:: _Look_.::**

Sam tries again. He bites his lower lip and forces himself to open his eyes. It burns. He feels like he’s going to go blind any second, but it keeps burning and he keeps seeing. Then, finally, there’s an agonized, furious hiss in his head and something loosens its grip on him. He can see.

He can see and it’s beautiful.

Sleek, agile body. Large, padded feet built for silence. Powerful hindquarters built for the swift sprint and the long leap. Round head with erect ears and powerful jaw. Intelligent, deep eyes. Tail twitching slightly, as though it’s caught scent of something it would like to sink its claws into.

A cougar of flame and golden light.

 _Of course,_ Sam thinks, and, _yes_ , because it isn’t what he would have chosen for himself but it’s _right_ , it’s so right he feels like he’s been half a soul all his life …

 **::You have,::** the cougar tells him. **::But I am not your other half.::**

 _Who?_ Sam thinks, and knows before the answer comes.

 **::De** an,” they say together, although again the cougar’s name is more complicated than that: all the things that Dean is instead of the word those images surround.

Sam doesn’t know if it’s true, but he likes the thought of being connected to his brother like that: likes the feel of it in his mind and around his heart. He’s never going to bring the notion up around Dean, of course. There’d never be an end to the Harlequin paperback jokes.

The cougar comes closer and Sam notices that there’s a dark swathe down its left flank. When the fire rolls through that spot, it goes back and cold: it goes dead. Just looking at the scar makes him feel sick.

 **::Yes,::** the cougar says. **::It is an old wound. I am … not perfect. But I can fight. I am strong. I came. I am not beautiful but I am brave enough to stand and fight the deathlessdark. No other will come.::**

Sam realizes with a start that it’s ashamed. It’s ashamed and afraid that he’ll send it away for having something that it perceives as a flaw.

It’s so ridiculous that he has to laugh.

The cougar stiffens and starts to draw back and Sam takes a step after it, reaching. _Wait! I’m not laughing at you. I wouldn’t. I have my own scars._ He doesn’t mean the ones on his skin. He wouldn’t dare to compare those to the black sickness running down the cougar’s flank.

 _I have my own battle,_ he adds. _But you know that._

 **::Yes.::** It sits down, slightly mollified, and pretends to wash its face while watching him with one eye. **::This could end you,::** it remarks casually. **::It could end both of us.::**

 _I know. I don’t care._

 **::You have to care,::** the cougar corrects him. **::You have to want to stalkpouncefeedfuck. You have to want it more than the deathlessdark wants to keep you.::**

 _You seem different,_ Sam tells it. _Than Dean’s wolf, I mean._

 **::I am older,::** the cougar answers, swishing its tail. **::Eldest. I have watched your people long. Littlerunner is young. He moves too quickly. He does not think. He does not know. I am … worried.::**

 _About what?_ Sam asks, his chest tightening. Jesus Christ, what else could possibly go wrong?

 **::We shall speak after,::** the cougar tells him. **::We must try soon, if we try at all.::** Then, almost shyly, it adds, **::We would be a good match. We are both scarred. Two-as-one maybe … not so scarred. Maybe whole again.::**

“You’re already beautiful,” Sam says aloud. His voice comes out in a dry rasp, and he jumps a little at the sound of it.

The cougar flicks its ears as it rises to its feet again. **::You have a silver tongue,::** it jokes. **::You should have called a fox.::**

 _It wouldn’t have been right,_ Sam thinks, switching back to this easier, faster method of communication.

 **::No,::** the cougar agrees. **::A fox would be too tame for you. Too weak. We fit.::**

 _Yeah_ , Sam agrees. He wants to reach out and run his hands along the cougar’s side—see if it feels like flame or fur—but he doesn’t quite dare.

 **::Ready?::** the cougar asks.

Sam can feel the darkness inside of him coil, bracing itself.

“Yes.”

The cougar pounces, and instead of knocking him to the ground, it somehow dives inside of him. Flame flickers across his skin before sinking inside, and his vision wavers with heat haze. He notes, distantly, that the sun is rising.

Then there’s nothing but the fire.

It hurts. It hurts more than Sam thought possible, searing his nerves into flaking ash over and over again until he’s screaming with it. His muscles are locked: rigid with the agony of the cougar prowling through him. It’s going everywhere—every single corner of his mind and soul—and leaving that blinding, sharp-edged light behind. Hunting down the darkness.

After the initial shock, Sam starts to slide inside of himself to follow it and is stopped by a feather-light thought.

 **::Wait. The stalk and pounce.::**

Sam has never done this before, but he understands instantly. The cougar is driving the darkness—the demon taint—out of hiding. It’s making itself a target.

 _Sam_ is the cougar in the brush.

After days of waiting, a few more minutes shouldn’t be that difficult to manage, but they are. The pain in Sam’s body keeps amping up as the light and the heat build, and he thinks that he has probably fallen over in the real world. He’s probably screaming and kicking up dust and scaring the shit out of the local wildlife.

In here, he’s quiet and still. He lets the flame flicker around him and hides in the shadows. He lets the pain flow over and through him and doesn’t cry out, although cougars _do_ scream—they can. But he’s stalking. He’s silent. He lets the flame cover him and hides in the light now: he hides in the burning, searing pain of it all and—

The darkness rears forward. Sam more senses than sees it hit the cougar, latching on to that dark, wounded place in the cougar’s flank and tearing.

Sam comes forward and he still doesn’t scream. He’s silent, he’s the sound of hissing flame, and then he’s _there_ and sinking his hands _(claws)_ deep into the darkness and ripping.

The darkness screams, letting go of the cougar to round on him. _A tiger by the tail_ , Sam thinks distantly as he hangs on. He rides the darkness, clinging where it can’t strike at him, and when it turns the cougar leaps as well. It doesn’t leap at the darkness, though: it leaps at _Sam_ —through him—into him—into his soul—and the burning is even greater. Sam understands with great clarity that he’s going to die. Nothing can survive this much heat, this much pain.

All he can hope to do is take the darkness down with him.

Sam claws into it with every part of him that’s still good. He strikes with his courage, and his compassion, and the loyalty he feels to his flawed but loving father. He strikes with his fidelity and his fixed, unswerving belief that there is something greater than man: greater even than any spirit or demon: something all knowing and kind and good.

But most of his weapon is comprised of what he feels for Dean, which is at once so complicated and so simple. His brother. His comrade-in-arms. His friend. His love. His own.

The darkness hisses and draws back, dripping ichor and bile.

Sam thought that nothing could possibly hurt more than the burning, but he was wrong yet again because this does. This is cold acid and pieces of himself shriveling up into rotten clumps. It’s death.

The darkness is finally dying, but so is he.

It was too late after all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Sam comes back to himself, he’s vibrating. He’s lying on his back on the ground, naked and cold in the early dawn light, and he’s vibrating. But he’s not dead, which is a drastic improvement over where he thought he’d be, so he isn’t complaining.

“I’m vibrating,” he says aloud, just testing to see if his voice works.

He’s flooded with amusement suddenly. His and … and not his, at the same time. The vibrations increase.

“No, wait. I’m purring.”

 **::No. _We_ are purring. We. Two-as-one.::**

Sam puts his hand on his chest and there aren’t any vibrations: only the steady rise and fall of his breath. He still _feels_ like he’s vibrating, though, and it takes him a few minutes to work out that it’s all inside of his head. Soul. Whatever.

Wow, this is completely disorienting.

On the plus side, he doesn’t feel the need to tear anyone’s throat out. That’s a good sign, right?

 **::Why would we want to do that?::** the cougar asks. Its amusement is sliding around thick and heavy inside Sam’s head, making it difficult to think.

“Could you … stop that? Or, uh, tone it down?” he asks.

After a moment, the vibrations drop to a dull roar and he can concentrate enough to sit up. “Thanks,” he says, rubbing his forehead. He feels pretty awesome, now that he’s thinking about it. His chest is … lighter … than it has been in months, and the slight, residual pain in his ear is gone. So are the scratches from the rabbit’s dying kicks.

Rabbit dying.

People dying.

He—oh _God_ , he—

Sam rolls over to the side and his stomach tries to heave its way out of his throat and onto the ground. He hasn’t eaten anything in about four days, though, so all that comes out in a thin, burning string of bile. Shuddering, he stares at it.

Oh Jesus, how could he have—and he was going to blow up the entire building, all those people but he _wanted_ to, and he shot Bela without even, he didn’t need to, he—

 **::Shh,::** the cougar whispers, and he’s enveloped by a strange sensation: like something warm and furred is rubbing up against his insides. **::That was not you. That was the sickness. That was the taint. You are clean now.::**

“It isn’t—it isn’t that simple for me,” Sam pants, but at the same time it is—it _is_ that simple—and his head feels like it’s going to explode.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he groans, and presses his face into the earth. Now he knows why berserkers always go insane. At one time, he’s just—he’s Sam Winchester, and he was born in 1983—and yet he’s also the cougar, not just old but _ancient_ and so filled with knowledge that he’s back to the head exploding thing.

 **::It gets easier,::** the cougar tells him.

“Have you … ah … have you done this before?” Sam asks.

 **::No. There is only one bonding. We stand soul to soul now. Once we have finished merging, we will be only one soul. We will be one heart.::**

It _is_ permanent, then, and there never was anything Sam could have done to untangle Geri from his brother. Wait. The wolf.

“You were—last night, before the—” He doesn’t know what to call it, so he plucks a word out of the cougar's mind and continues, “—the _brenna_ , you said something about the wolf. That you were worried.”

The cougar’s amusement fades. **::Yes. He is young. Impressionable. He longed for the old days, the old battles, the old warriors. This is why he answered the summons. Only the very young—or the very stupid—come now.::**

“You came,” Sam points out as he slowly gets to his feet. He’s struck by the sensation of walking with both two and four feet at the same time and he manages to make it three whole steps before falling down again.

 **::Go slower,::** the cougar advises. **::We are still new. Still merging. We are not whole yet.::**

“If you’re such an expert, then you try it,” Sam mutters into the ground.

The cougar immediately comes forward and Sam watches his own arms move around without his permission. The cougar manages to get them up onto Sam’s hands and knees and then drops them again, which takes a whole new kind of special, in Sam’s opinion.

The cougar retreats languidly, with an air of refinement and poise. As though it hadn’t just dropped Sam on his face for the second time in a minute.

 **::We will wait until are whole,::** it announces.

Sam turns his head and squints at the sky, which is lighter than he wants it to be. He wants to get back to Dean. Now. Yesterday. “How long is that gonna take?” he asks.

 **::Not long. You are open. We merge well.::**

Sam frowns. “Did you just call me easy? No, wait. Scratch that. Go back to the wolf.”

 **::Littlerunner saw Deanmate. He saw into him. Deep. He saw a good bonding and took without asking. He is too eager. Impetuous.::**

Sam can see how that would be bad from Dean’s point of view, but he still can’t figure out why the cougar is so worked up about it. And it is, he’s beginning to realize. The cougar isn’t just a little concerned: it’s _worried_. Very, very worried. If Sam pushes his mind in just the right way …

The cougar swats at him and then, perhaps rethinking the possibility that it can keep something from the guy it’s sharing a mind and soul with, it says, **::Yes, I am worried. A joining is only good if both are willing. If one of your people takes without asking, then there is madness. If an andi takes, there is sickness.::**

It pauses and then says, **::If Deanmate does not accept the bonding, he will die. They will both die.::**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _brenna_ ........................................ burning


	33. Surrender

Sam is scrambling for his feet before he knows what he’s doing. He has to get to Dean, he has to—

 **::You have to crawl before you can walk,::** the cougar says, snatching control of his body away and keeping him still.

It was his body first, but Sam is too panicked to remember how to wrest control back. _No, you don’t understand—he’s my brother, I need—he can’t, not now, not—_

 **::There is no danger. Not yet. The drug—the … Gleipnir?::** It pauses for a pulse of recognition from Sam and then continues, **::Delays. Their souls are already two-as-one, but they have not begun to merge. There is no danger until they stand soul to soul _and_ mind to mind.::**

It takes Sam a few minutes to understand what the cougar is telling him and then he slumps, weary and shaken. There’s a phantom sensation of a rough tongue on his cheek and he can feel the cougar’s heavy weight inside him, sending out waves of comfort: of confidence.

Slowly, he relaxes, and as he does things that he’s been missing because of his preoccupation with what’s going on inside of him start to filter through. He can smell … God, _everything_. The world is a confusing rush of scents that Sam can’t sort out, but it seems earthier than anything else right now because his face is pressed into the ground.

Not even the earth smell is simple, though: it’s filled with the memory of the creatures that moved across its surface, and he can—Jesus, he can smell the damned worms beneath the surface. He tastes the potential for life: sees in his mind the herd of deer that moved through here last week just after a hard rain thundered down and erased his ability to go any further back. Smells himself everywhere, of course, and … and, surprisingly, Dean.

 **::He is our mate,::** the cougar tells him. **::We should smell like him. He should smell like us. We will mark him.::**

Sam is trembling, all but transfixed by the flood of information coming in through his nose—ears too, now that he thinks about it—but that’s pushed from his mind by the almost physical surge of revulsion that snaps through him. He still wants Dean, but he can’t touch him like that. After these last three nights, he isn’t sure that he’ll ever be able to touch Dean like that, even if his brother thinks he’s ready. The things Sam saw—the things he remembers actually _wanting_ , and considering …

His mind shies away from those sweat-soaked visions and he shakes his head. _No. He’s hurt. We can’t … touch him. Like that._

 **::I understand,::** the cougar replies instantly. Its voice is gentle. **::I meant only—::**

It shows him two images: a full-grown cougar licking her cubs, and then two of the lanky cats rubbing their cheeks together. After a brief, fumbling delay, Sam’s mind translates that into one vision: him and Dean curled in on each other, sleeping skin to skin. Innocent. A cocoon of warmth and meshing scents and perfectright _mate_.

He wants that, wants Dean, wants to be that close and feel safe with his brother, but he doesn’t know if he can manage it. He knows for a fact how damned tempting Dean can be: how the mere sight of his brother’s bare skin is enough to make him forget his best intentions. Being so close, tangled up in Dean and breathing the warmth of his body in … God, what if he just can’t help himself?

 **::You are stronger than you think,::** the cougar soothes. **::The sickness is gone. There is no danger. We are safe. Deanmate is safe. We are safe together.::**

Sam can feel its certainty, but he’s still doubtful in his own mind.

He’s startled to realize that he still _has_ his own mind. That strange doubling, too full, too _much_ feeling is finally fading. There’s information floating around inside of him that he didn’t have before, and memories that don’t belong to him, and he’s getting a steady input of emotion from the cougar, but he’s still Sam. He’s just … a little more.

Carefully, he tries to get up again and this time he manages it. The cougar is still envisioning this as a four limb deal, but it’s easy enough to separate those images out from the knowledge that he’s still in Sam’s body: that Sam is human and therefore only has to deal with two legs. He moves over to the pickup and he’s still rational, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and it’s possible that this might be okay after all.

 **::Why would we want to hurt anyone?::** the cougar asks, and then Sam has the queer sensation of something poking around inside his thoughts. A moment later, the cougar gives a little hissing noise of displeasure. **::You think of twisted bondings. We are right. We are the first in many, many generations. We will stay as this. There will be no madness. No sickness. We are pure and strong.::**

“You mean the third in many generations,” Sam says with a slight smile as he starts pulling his clothes on. After so many days spent wearing nothing at all—or maybe because the cougar isn’t used to them—even the cotton boxers feel strange against his skin.

 **::Deanmate is not complete. He is not whole yet.::**

Sam guesses that that’s true. If Dean were whole—if he saw and knew and felt what Sam does now—then he’d know that there wasn’t any danger. He wouldn’t be injecting himself with that damned drug that Bela cooked up for Vincent.

“There’s still Dad,” he says, pulling his pants up and working at the buttons. He’s sitting on the edge of the passenger seat putting his socks and shoes on when he realizes that the cougar isn’t saying anything.

“You still in there?” he calls.

 **::Always.::**

“I said, ‘there’s still Dad’,” Sam repeats. This time he catches the wary tickle of apprehension and regret the words cause and stops what he’s doing. He stares out at the forest, seeing more of it than he ever has before and not seeing it at all at the same time. After a few moments, he sighs and leans his head against the doorframe.

“Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

 **::There was no summons,::** the cougar answers reluctantly. **::Littlerunner sensed pieces of DadJohnFather, but not the whole. Littlerunner found a willing andi. Deepsleeper had lost cubs to the deathlessdark. He wanted to hurtbiterendtear. It was a close bonding, but not … not perfect.::**

“That’s why the demon was able to possess him,” Sam says, understanding now the wolf’s guilty flinch at that question.

 **::Yes. Littlerunner meant well, but … ::**

“He’s young. Yeah, I know.” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose for a second and then makes himself say, “He would have gone insane, wouldn’t he? If he hadn’t died.”

 **::I can not say. The bonding was wrong on both sides, but … they were both willing. It has never been done before. Maybe they would have found a balance. Maybe there would have been madness. Maybe there would have been sickness. Maybe there would have been both. There is no way to know.::**

“Yeah.” Sam sighs and then says, “Dean’s gonna be pissed when he finds out. I mean, he was pissed about that one anyway, but … it’s gonna be worse. If he finds out before he merges with Geri, he’ll dig his heels in. He’s stubborn like that.”

 **::Littlerunner made a wise choice for his own bonding. They fit. They are right, if Deanmate is willing. You must make him willing. You must use your silver tongue to convince him.::**

“I think you’re overestimating my ability to convince Dean to do _anything_ ,” Sam says bitterly. “I couldn’t even get him to eat a fucking burger the last time I saw him.”

 **::You must try,::** the cougar says, implacable. **::You must succeed, or there is only earth.::**

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam is surprised and then again he isn’t when he pulls up in front of the cabin and Missouri opens the front door. She gives him a warm smile, wiping her hands dry on a dishcloth.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” she says as he jumps out of the truck and hurries over.

 **::Seer,::** the cougar murmurs with a tinge of respectful awe.

Sam’s steps slow at that reminder that, although he doesn’t feel all that different inside, he isn’t exactly human anymore. He’s suddenly awkward with the uncertainty of whether Missouri is going to be afraid of him or not. Whether she actually approves of his decision now that he’s standing in front of her. He wonders what color his eyes are.

Then Missouri pulls him into a crushing hug. “Don’t be stupid, Sam,” she rebukes him gently. “I’m glad to see you. Both of you.”

Sam returns the hug, careful with the new strength he can feel surging through his limbs. Missouri still lets out a crushed little whoof of air and he loosens up some more. This whole super power thing is gonna take some getting used to.

“How is he?” he asks softly as they part.

Missouri’s smile fades and her eyes darken with worry. “He isn’t good. What’s been done to that boy … I won’t lie to you, Sam. It’s going to take years to fix.”

Sam wasn’t expecting any other answer, but his throat tightens anyway. The cougar gives his mind a reassuring caress. “We have time,” he whispers, and isn’t sure whether they’re his own words or the cougar’s.

Missouri smiles again and smoothes Sam’s hair back from his face. “That’s a boy,” she murmurs. Then, clearing her throat and speaking in a louder voice, she says, “I’m about to make some lunch. I’d bet you could do with a little feeding yourself.”

Sam could. He’s nowhere near as hungry as he probably should be, but he wouldn’t say no to whatever Missouri wants to whip up. He remembers her cooking being good. But when she heads back into the cabin, he can’t make himself move.

Pausing in the doorway, Missouri calls over her shoulder, “Why don’t you come in, Sam?”

“Sam?” Dean’s voice comes from further inside.

Sam shrinks back a little at the sound. God, what if Dean hates him?

 **::He won’t,::** the cougar tells him, and slips forward to do what Sam can’t, walking them up to the cabin and through the front door.

Dean’s at the edge of his invisible cage when Sam walks in, face so openly anxious and tense that Sam is suddenly moving forward on his own and reaching out. He reaches the edge of the symbols and stops. Feels a barrier where there wasn’t one before: something thick and threatening pain. His stomach twists. God, how could he have caged Dean like this? There’s no excuse for it. None.

Dean’s face has gone slack with horror. “No,” he whispers, staring into Sam’s eyes. “Jesus, no.”

“It’s okay, Dean,” he says quickly. “I’m okay.”

But Dean is scrambling backwards, tripping over the edge of the bed and righting himself. He’s shaking and his hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Damn it,” he whispers, and then shouts, “Goddamn it!”

“Language, boy,” Missouri says sharply from behind Sam. Then she squats by his feet and scrapes part of the nearest symbol away with a butter knife.

Sam shoots through the opening and Dean, seeing him coming, turns and flees for the bathroom. Sam follows, putting on a burst of speed. Now that they’re on equal footing again, he isn’t surprised to find that he’s faster than his brother. He’s always been built for speed, rather than the endurance Dean can manage.

They collide heavily as Dean reaches for the door handle—meaning to slam it shut, although Sam has no idea where Dean thinks he’s going to go after that. The impact tumbles them both further into the bathroom and slams them against the far wall. Somehow, Sam gets his arms around his brother and for a moment Dean is in his arms, and everything is right, and then Dean gets a hand against Sam’s chest and shoves.

Sam stumbles back a few steps from the force of the shove before catching himself. He’s about to move in again when the cougar says, **::Softly. Go softly.::**

The advice makes him pause and take a good look at his brother. Dean is still pressed up against the wall, eyes wide and spilling tears and muscles trembling. He reeks of fear and sorrow and pain. The scents are disorienting in and of themselves, and Sam’s a little freaked out that he can read his brother this way. The same way, he realizes suddenly, that Dean was able to read him in the Arena. Dean hadn’t needed the extra help to push Sam’s buttons, but Sam’s pretty sure he used it, the jerk.

Moving slowly, Sam takes another step back and raises his hands. Open, palms out.

Dean doesn’t look any more relaxed, but that pungent, unpleasant fear-scent lessens slightly.

“Dean,” Sam says. “It’s me. It’s Sam, okay? I’m fine.”

“You’re fine? You’re _fine_?” Dean sounds angry, but he’s still crying, and Sam doesn’t smell anger in the air. Looks like Dean’s days of lying about his own emotions are pretty much over, not that he was all that good at it in the first place.

“I had to do something, Dean. I was … I don’t know, turning. Going darkside. I would have hurt you.”

“So you decided to do this instead?” Dean snaps, blinking furiously at his tears. “You didn’t think we’ve lost enough Winchesters to these fuckers, now you had to go ahead and make it a full house? You stupid shit!”

Okay, _now_ he smells angry.

“It isn’t what you think it is, man. It’s—it’s okay. I’m not going to go insane.”

Dean snorts a wild laugh and Sam can’t stop himself from taking a step forward. When Dean flinches, he brings himself up short.

“Dean,” he says softly. “I need you to listen to me—really listen, okay? This—you and me, we’re different. The other berserkers—the ones that Pastor Jim told us all those horror stories about—they decided for themselves what kind of animal spirit they wanted to bond with. They weren’t good choices: weren’t the _right_ choices. They couldn’t properly bond, and it drove them insane. That isn’t going to happen to us.”

“Like hell it isn’t!” Dean shouts. “I remember! I tore some guy apart—some nineteen year old _kid_ , and I just—”

“You were drugged, Dean,” Sam breaks in. “You were drugged, and the wolf was drugged, and none of that was you.”

Dean shakes his head sharply. “I wasn’t drugged when I almost killed Dad so I could fuck some girl in the woods, was I?” he asks. “You got an excuse for that?”

“Littlerunner is young,” the cougar says through Sam’s mouth. “And you were not bonded. He did not understand human ways. He only knew the path of blood and strength. The path of instinct. That will change when you are whole.”

Dean’s face shuts down. “I want to talk to my brother, you son of a bitch.”

The cougar retreats, offering Sam a little brush of apology. **::I made it worse. I am sorry.::**

 _S’okay,_ he thinks back. _It isn’t your fault_.

“Dean, you’re gonna need to trust me,” he says aloud. “I’m fine. You’ll be fine if you just accept the wolf. If you don’t, you’re going to get sick, and you’re going to die.”

Dean doesn’t look terribly upset at the prospect, and he doesn’t smell upset either. Now that Sam is thinking about it, he understands what the wolf meant when it said that Dean smelt like earth, although it isn’t anything like the smell of real earth. Thoughts of death—a longing for it—taint the air around Dean with a thick, ruffling scent. Like sickness.

 _Deal with it later,_ Sam tells himself, and quickly presses the attack with: “If you die, I’ll die.”

Dean starts at that and a fresh bolt of fear laces through the air.

“Vincent wasn’t lying, Dean. Berserkers—true berserkers—mate for life, and you’re it for me. You die—you leave me here alone—and that’s it. I’m done too.”

He turns away then, unable to keep the tears from falling anymore and not wanting Dean to see that. Dean can probably smell it anyway—Sam isn’t hiding anything anymore either—but it at least provides them both with an illusion of privacy.

Missouri is dicing peppers on the kitchen counter, and Sam hesitates for a moment before heading over to sit at the table. He rubs his fingers against the wood while he cries quietly, ignoring the cougar’s tentative attempts at comfort. Missouri heard him—Sam wasn’t being quiet, so she must have—and if she somehow missed it before, then now she knows how completely fucked up Sam is.

“I knew the first time I saw you two, Sam,” Missouri says without turning around.

He hunches a little, stomach twisting in embarrassment, and doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not gonna say it didn’t take some getting used to, but … you aren’t hurting anyone.”

“How the hell can you be so calm about this?” Sam demands, keeping his voice lowered so Dean can ignore the conversation if he tries. If he wants to.

“I’m psychic, Sam,” Missouri responds, dumping the peppers into a skillet on the stove. “I see a petty meanness every day in people. I see hate, and hurtful, hurtful thoughts.” Turning, she fixes him with a too-knowing gaze. “You two love each other. It isn’t normal, no, but it happened. You were only half a person without him, honey, and Dean, he needs you more than he needs air. He’s just too damned stubborn to admit it.”

She raises her eyes as she says that last bit, and her eyes lift to a place behind Sam. When he twists his head, he sees that Dean has edged out to the bathroom doorway and is watching them with an unreadable expression. Sam is a little too far away to read his brother by scent, and right now he’s glad. Dean deserves a little privacy.

“I’m making chili,” Missouri announces, regarding Dean with the same, no-nonsense look she used on him in Lawrence. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and find me some tomato sauce?”

Dean hesitates, looking between Missouri to Sam and then back again. Then he steps across the broken trap and moves over toward pantry, human-slow.

Sam wants to see it as a good sign, but as his brother walks past him, he catches that ruffling, sick smell, and he knows better.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Missouri’s chili is probably excellent, but Sam wouldn’t know. With Dean giving off that horrible, unsettling scent, he can’t manage to do more than push it around in his bowl. The noises the cougar is making in his head aren’t helping either: harsh, panting sounds with the edge of a growl. It’s as distressed by Dean as he is, and it isn’t as good at hiding its emotions.

Missouri finally reaches over and whaps the back of Sam’s knuckles with her fork. “I didn’t make that so you could play with it, Sam,” she says as he shakes his hand out.

Sam glances guiltily at his brother, who’s been shoveling steady forkfuls into his own mouth, and Dean is staring at him with narrowed eyes. When he catches Sam looking back, he ducks his head back down to his bowl.

A moment later, the scent that’s been bothering Sam so much is gone.

His hands give a tiny, hopeful jerk, but the cougar sighs. **::I hoped it would take longer for DeanMate to hide in the brush again. You are too obvious. You must learn better stealth.::**

But what the cougar is suggesting is ludicrous, isn’t it? Dean can’t just stop smelling like something because he decides to, can he?

 **::Scent comes from the body,::** the cougar reminds him glumly. **::You can hold your breath and slow your heart if you know how. You can hide your scent.::**

It isn’t fair. Sam finally had a reliable way to read his brother’s emotional state and it lasted for all of an hour before Dean took it away from him. He realizes that he’s being irrational—he was just thinking that Dean deserved some more privacy, after all—but that doesn’t make him any happier about the situation.

Sam never considers trying to mask his own feelings in return, though, and the cougar doesn’t suggest it. They both know that, as jumpy as Dean is right now, he needs that steady input of information to ground himself. And they really don’t need to give him another reason to distrust them: he seems to be thinking up plenty on his own.

Sam isn’t above wallowing in his hurt that Dean would block him out like this, though. He can tell from the way that Dean’s hand tightens on his fork that the signal—the scent—is coming through loud and clear. Good. Maybe it’ll help get through to his brother.

But Dean just says, “Eat your food,” without looking at him, and then shovels another forkful into his own mouth.

Sam eats. It tastes like cardboard the whole way down.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He asks Missouri to stay and she doesn’t make him feel too stupid when she points out that there are only two beds and no couch. Sam trails outside after her while Dean washes the dishes.

“Stay for dinner, at least,” he says desperately. “I can’t cook for shit, but Dean makes a mean mac and cheese.”

Missouri’s smile is slow, and when she hugs him Sam catches a bitter scent on her skin that he thinks must be sadness. “You’re both good boys, honey, but I can’t stay here any longer. I don’t belong, and I’m making Dean nervous.”

“I don’t … I don’t know what to do,” Sam whispers, feeling stripped bare and open in front of her. It isn’t a pleasant feeling, and the cougar likes it even less than he does, shying deeper inside of Sam in an attempt to hide from those dark, knowing eyes.

“You be his brother, Sam,” Missouri tells him.

“Isn’t there any advice you can give me?” he presses. “Something to say—some way to get through to him, convince him that I’m telling the truth?”

“Oh, honey, you know I would if I could, but your brother—he never was very easy to read, and now he’s locked up so tight inside himself that all I can get are surface impressions.”

Sam nods, pressing his lips tightly together and blinking rapidly in an attempt to keep from crying. He’s so goddamned _lost_ , and now Missouri is leaving him, and he’ll be alone as well.

 **::Not alone,::** the cougar reminds him, but right now—in light of what he’s facing with Dean—that seems like a small consolation.

Missouri reaches up and brushes her fingertips against the skin at the corner of one of his eyes. “I do know that this bothers him. It’s unsettling.” For her too, Sam guesses from the way her mouth twists a little. “If you can do something about it, it might help relax him.”

The cougar immediately slips forward and shows Sam how to hide what they are. It’s almost like clenching a fist inside of his mind: it’ll take effort, and he’ll have to work to maintain it, but the principle seems easy enough. He tries it now and her smile softens.

“Better?”

“That’s fine, Sam,” she tells him.

After that, they say the things that people are supposed to say when the time comes to part paths. Missouri tells him to call when he can, and to stop by if he and Dean are ever passing through Lawrence. Sam says he will, and they’ll try, and she pretends to believe him.

Eventually, there’s nothing left to say but the goodbye itself, and they do that quickly. Another hug, a kiss on the cheek, and Sam is watching Missouri pull away down the drive in her rental car. He stands there until the dust settles and then heads back inside.

Dean is leaning against the kitchen counter wiping his hands on a dishtowel. Sam looks at his brother with his old, hazel eyes and can’t think of anything to say. Dean looks back for a moment and then tosses the towel into the sink.

“Don’t do that,” he says as he starts to put the dishes away.

“Don’t do what?” Sam asks. It’s a conversation, of sorts, which is progress. He steps closer.

“Don’t pretend to be something you aren’t,” Dean snaps without looking at him.

“I’m your brother,” Sam says in a small, desperate voice.

Dean shakes his head and gives a short laugh. “Yeah, you’re really not.”

“Dean—”

“Tell me something: did that rabbit scream when you killed it? Did you like the way the blood tasted?” His voice lowers, trailing across Sam’s skin like a caress. “Do you want more?”

Sam does, or the cougar does: either way it’s the same thing. But they don’t want it the way that Dean means. They don’t want to hurt things—torture and bleed them the way that the demons _(deathlessdark)_ do. They want the hunt. They want to be what they were meant to be: to take part in that old circle of life crap that Elton John sings about.

Sam finally— _finally_ —sees the beauty and the necessity of the hunt that Dean has been trying to drum into his skull for twenty years and Dean’s talking to him like he’s about to start drinking blood as a nightcap.

 **::He doesn’t understand,::** the cougar says, watching with Sam as Dean slams the cupboard shut. Sam’s frustration makes the cougar lash its tail inside his mind, and he wants to yowl. They both know how well that would go over, though, and so they stand silently as Dean stomps over to his bed and starts flipping through the new issue of Musclecar Enthusiast.

There’s a pile of other magazines on the floor, and a few worn Hammett novels. Missouri must have brought them.

“Dean,” Sam starts again. He doesn’t know what to say, though, and when Dean keeps reading, no sign that he heard Sam say his name, Sam’s shoulders drop into a defeated posture. He slinks outside again, shuts the door behind him, and sobs.

He half expects Dean to appear with a plate of cookies and a wad of tissues the way he always used to when they were kids, but he never does.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When the sun is going down, Sam heads back inside. Dean looks up from his bed, meeting Sam’s gaze—gold again, what’s the point in trying?—and inserts the needle into his neck. Sam watches his brother inject himself with the Gleipnir. He doesn’t move when Dean gets up and tosses the spent syringe into the trash.

“I made dinner,” Dean says calmly.

It’s mac and cheese.

Of course.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Good night,” Sam says.

And, “We’re going to be okay.”

And, “I’m in love with you. I think I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen. Dean? Did you hear me? I said I love you.”

And Dean says, “Shut the fuck up and go to sleep already.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam wakes up in the middle of the night with a heavy weight on his chest. He opens his eyes and everything is as bright as day, although he knows there are no lights on in the room. Dean is straddling his waist, Dean’s beautiful face hangs above him in stark black and white, and he must be dreaming.

Then he sees the gun in his brother’s hands and knows he’s awake.

Dean is holding the gun with both hands and pointing it at Sam’s forehead. His own face is determined, and there’s no telling what he’s feeling because he still has the empty, clean scent of hiding.

The room is silent enough that Sam can hear his brother’s heartbeat, strong and steady. Too fast for him to be perfectly calm, though, or perfectly okay with what he’s doing.

Sam looks up at his brother and doesn’t say anything.

Dean looks back at him and doesn’t fire.

After almost a minute, Sam realizes that Dean’s hands are shaking on the gun. There are stress lines around the corners of his mouth. As he looks up at his brother, something in Sam’s chest gives way, flooding him with an ache that’s both agonizing and liberating.

“If this is what you need to do, Dean,” he says softly, “Then do it.”

He thinks, for a moment, that Dean will. He sees it as clearly as any vision: two rapid shots to his head, and then Dean turning the gun on himself. Another, solitary shot. Then silence.

But Dean doesn’t move.

“It’s okay,” Sam adds. “I won’t be mad at you.”

The cougar is silent inside of him, sorrowful but unafraid. It has known completion for almost a day, which is more than most of its kind will ever have. If that’s all it ever gets, it will be enough.

“I still love you.”

Dean’s face twitches at that and he lets out a sob. Sam feels the cold press of the gun disappear and then Dean is kissing him, hard and desperate, and whispering, “Sammy. God, Sam, I can’t.”

It’s the first time Dean has said his name since he saw Sam’s eyes.

Sam reaches up for his brother, heart leaping with hope, and his arms close on air. He sits up, the sheets sliding down to puddle around his waist, and Dean is already standing in the open doorway.

“I’m sorry,” Dean breathes, and then turns and sprints out into the night.

Swearing, Sam struggles out of the sheets and hurries to the door himself. Dean’s already gone, of course, but Sam yells after him anyway. “Dean! _Dean_!”

 **::He will return,::** the cougar says.

Sam grips the doorframe as he stares out into the night. His legs tremble with the need to sprint after his brother’s scent. _What if he doesn’t?_ he asks.

 **::He will,::** the cougar repeats.

“How the fuck can you be so sure?” Sam demands. He realizes that he’s crying again and reaches up with one hand to wipe his eyes.

 **::He is our mate. He loves us. He needs us.::**

Sam rests his head against the doorframe for a moment, breathing in the fresh scent of the woods outside and the lingering, warmer smell of his brother, and then turns around and goes back inside.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam is eating breakfast—Fruit Loops and a glass of OJ—at the table when the door opens and his brother’s scent floods the room again. His heart hammers in his chest, but he doesn’t look up. Dean moves around the room for a minute and then comes and sits down across from Sam.

“This is completely fucked, you know that, right?” Dean’s voice is wasted, harsh with exhaustion and some unreadable emotion, but Sam thinks he hears a tiny thread of humor there as well.

“We’ve never been normal, Dean,” Sam says, staring at his cereal.

“You gave it a good run for its money, though,” Dean murmurs, and now Sam can work out what the emotion is: regret.

“I’m not sorry,” he says. “I chose this. I chose you.”

Dean sighs and then shoves something toward him across the table. Sam glances up a little, expecting the gun, and then freezes. After a moment, he hesitantly reaches out and runs a finger along the top of the case.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

Dean laughs. Hard. Brittle. “Fuck no. I’m bored, is what I am. I don’t want to sit around and wait anymore. I just want it done.”

There are only nine syringes left in the case, but it seems to take Sam forever to empty them out into the sink. He didn’t like the drug before, and he likes it even less now. It makes his skin itch.

The cougar’s thoughts have a ruffled feel to them: like fur standing on end. **::Nasty,::** it says as the blue swirls down the drain.

Sam can only think of one word that better describes the Gleipnir.

Gone.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s obvious by midnight that something has gone wrong. Dean’s been restless since sunset. It isn’t so much the pacing that bothers Sam and the cougar, as the intent with which he does it. Like he has somewhere to go instead just making rounds of the cabin. The later it gets, the longer Dean’s strides get, turning what normally would have been a tightly controlled step into rangy lopes.

Five strides from one end of the cabin to the other. Pause. Five strides back the other way. Pause.

It’s almost like clockwork, except for the fact that the line Dean moves along is slowly edging closer to the door.

This time, the cougar isn’t quite so equivocal about letting him out of their sight. **::Keep him here. We need to be close to help,::** it tells Sam, and shifts them closer.

Sam takes over halfway through the first step and puts himself in Dean’s path. Dean is so intent on what he’s doing that he almost bowls Sam over before he realizes he’s there and skids to a halt.

“What?” he bites out.

Dean’s breath is coming too fast and shallow, and Sam knows that it isn’t from the pacing. His eyes aren’t just focused but _cutting_ : pupils sunk to pinpricks and swallowed up by an impossible shade of golden green. Sam can smell sweat on him, and sour fear, and the faintest hint of that ruffling earth scent. He’s pretty sure Dean isn’t aware he’s giving it off again.

“Stop running,” he says.

“I’m pacing, Sam. There’s a difference.” Dean moves to brush past and Sam grabs his arm.

“The wolf’s already part of you, Dean. You can’t get away from it. And this—this whole pacing thing is freaking me out and it isn’t helping.”

Dean drops his eyes and licks his lips.

“Now why don’t you sit down? There’s cards. We could play poker.”

The cougar pokes into Sam’s memories at the new word and then gives an approving purr. **::Poker,::** it says to itself, musing, and the word comes out as ‘AmbushFromTheBrushSlyStalk’. It’s gonna love chess.

“Fine,” Dean says, pulling his arm free. “Whatever.” He moves—lopes—back to the kitchen table where he sits with one leg rattling up and down like a malfunctioning piston. Sam is unpleasantly reminded of the way his brother’s leg twitched when Vincent was electrocuting him, but he doesn’t say anything. At least Dean is sitting down.

Dean’s fingers drum on the table in a rhythmless, nervous motion as Sam gets the cards and comes over. He manages to sit until all the cards are dealt, and then instead of picking his hand up he pushes his chair back and stalks toward the refrigerator.

“Dean—”

“I’m getting a beer,” Dean snarls. “Man’s allowed a last fucking request, and I’m having a drink.”

Sam waits quietly at the table for his brother to finish going through first the refrigerator and then the pantry and the rest of the cabinets. When Dean slams the last cabinet shut and leans there, chest heaving, Sam says, “Come back and sit down, man, okay? We’ll go out to a bar and get a drink tomorrow night.”

Dean makes a strangled sound that might be a laugh and starts pacing again. Sam pulls his chair across the room and sits in front of the cabin door and lets him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By morning, the nervous energy is gone. Dean isn’t sweating anymore, but that’s probably because he doesn’t have any moisture left to spare. His lips are dry and cracked, and his hair is listless and flat on his head. He’s sprawled out on his bed unmoving. Only the rapid rise-fall of his chest gives any indication that he’s still alive.

Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed holding his brother’s hand, but he doesn’t think Dean even knows he’s here anymore.

 **::We are losing him,::** the cougar frets.

 _I know,_ Sam tells it, and tightens his grip on his brother. He’d be crying, but he’s pretty dried up himself by now.

“Sammy,” Dean pants.

Placing his other hand on his brother’s cheek, Sam murmurs, “I’m right here, man.”

“Don’t—don’t feel good—can’t—” He licks his lips clumsily with a tongue that looks bone dry and then continues, “Can’t think. It’s in my head. I. Everything’s. No. No, fuck you, I won’t.”

Sam tightens up on his brother’s hand until he’s in danger of breaking it and then says, “Dean, listen to me, okay? You hear me?”

Dean blinks.

“Come on, man, you were just here. Focus.” He chances a quick, extra squeeze and feels something crack.

 **::He can heal later,::** the cougar reminds him when he suffers a quick pang of guilt.

It’s true, and besides, the pain seems to be giving Dean an anchor. This time when he blinks, Sam sees awareness in his brother’s eyes.

“Sammy?” Dean mumbles. Then, pressing his eyes shut, he creases his face in pained concentration. “Tough. Thinking is. There’s too much.”

Sam remembers what it felt like to finish merging his mind with the cougar’s, and can’t imagine being stuck there for hours the way Dean’s been. “I know, man,” he says, vision blurring. Turns out he’s got a few more tears in him after all. “It’ll get better, but you need to stop fighting. You need to let the wolf in.”

He’s said that a million times tonight and been met with everything from derision to silence. This time, Dean opens his eyes again and says in a reluctant, frightened whisper, “I don’t know how.”

“Shh,” Sam murmurs, raking his fingers through his brother’s hair. “Just let go, okay?”

“I can’t,” Dean repeats, and starts shaking. The bad smell—the hot, pulsing scent of sickness and approaching death—jumps sharply.

“No. No, Dean, don’t do this,” Sam begs. He bows forward, pressing his forehead to his brother’s and mingling their breaths. “Let go,” he whispers. “For once in your goddamned life, stop being so fucking stubborn.”

Dean opens his mouth—probably to protest again—and Sam kisses him. It’s probably the world’s worst kiss. Dean’s lips are chapped to hell, his mouth is hot and dry, and he’s too out of it to do more than lie there tasting like salt and ruin. But it might be the last time Sam gets to do this, so he pours himself into it anyway, trying to cram a lifetime of kisses into this one moment.

He has enough time left to try one more thing, and if it doesn’t work then Dean is going to die with Sam’s angry voice in his ears. _I’m sorry,_ he thinks. _If this doesn’t work, then I’m sorry._ But he doesn’t have time for guilt right now: he can feel Dean’s heart, so recently healed and strong, falter.

Breaking the kiss sharply, he snaps, “Dean! Let go right fucking now!”

Dean’s face flickers with confusion. “Dad?” he whispers.

It hurts. Christ, it _hurts_ that these may be Dean’s last few seconds and he’s too out of it to even know who he’s with. But if this is what Sam has to work with, then he’ll use it.

“That’s an order.” Mimicking intonation and inflection. Using his own iron and desperation to fuel the whole thing.

Dean closes his eyes and makes a weak, sobbing sound. He tries feebly to turn his face into the pillow and Sam grips his brother’s shoulder and flips him firmly onto his back.

“You do it now, boy!” he growls, and Dean flinches.

Biting down on his lip, Dean shakes and whines back in his throat and then goes limp.

Sam can feel the jolt in his own soul as the wolf snaps home. He knows before Dean sucks in a sharp breath and opens his eyes what he’ll see.

Gold. Gold and awe and peace and _home_.

Those gold eyes are dazed for a moment and then they focus on Sam. Dean’s lips twitch up into a weary, but completely genuine, smile.

“Hey, man,” he rasps.

Sam doesn’t think his voice is going to work for a few seconds, but once he swallows his heart he manages to croak, “Hey.”

Dean’s hand comes up and grabs Sam’s shirt weakly. “If you’re gonna say it, say it now, dude,” he says.

Sam can’t help but laugh at that, relieved and open. He puts his hand over his brother’s and strokes his thumb along the side of Dean’s fist. Holds Dean’s hand in place while he leans over and buries his face against the side of Dean’s neck.

“I told you so,” he breathes.

Dean’s other hand comes up and strokes clumsily through Sam’s hair. “Yeah, you did.”


	34. The Long Road Back

Dean lets Sam hold him for a while and then he pats Sam’s shoulder and says, “Dude, I reek. Gotta shower.”

He does, too: that smell of his near-miss with death is all over his skin, hiding the summer strong, comforting Dean-scent beneath. But Sam doesn’t let go.

“Sam,” Dean sighs when he realizes that Sam isn’t going anywhere. “We can’t just lie here forever.”

“Yeah, I know, I just—maybe we could—you know, shower together?” That way Sam won’t have to let go just yet. Because he knows—knows it deep and sure in his bones—that as soon as Dean gets a few minutes to himself he’s going to shore up his walls and leave Sam on the other side.

Dean shifts underneath him. “I can wash myself.”

Sam winces at how uneasy Dean sounds, but isn’t really surprised. His brother is one with Geri now, in mind as well as in soul, but that doesn’t erase six months of abuse. It doesn’t mean that Dean is going to be any more eager to have anyone—even Sam—near his naked body. Even now, Dean is getting more anxious by the second: Sam’s body draped over his, caging him in.

Sam makes himself sit up and let go. Dean’s hand immediately falls free from his shirt as Dean rolls off the other side of the bed and stands up. He doesn’t disappear into the bathroom with the wolf’s speed, but Sam suspects that’s only because he doesn’t have the energy to manage it. Sitting where he is on the edge of his brother’s bed, Sam runs his hand over sheets that are still warm from Dean’s body and tries to resign himself to the uphill battle that’s coming.

Sure enough, when Dean comes out of the shower, he’s all easy slaps on the back and smiles. He makes them both breakfast—scrambled eggs and cheese wrapped up in pieces of white bread—and then tells Sam to get his shit packed and in whatever sorry excuse for a car they have.

They’re going hunting.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam is certain at first that it can’t last. Dean’s too damaged to keep up the front for long. But days become weeks become months and his brother is still coasting along.

Hunting is easier these days. They’re faster, stronger, and harder to hurt. They can smell unnatural things the same way that Sam used to be able to smell bonfires or gasoline. They still have to research if they’ve never scented something before, though, and they still have to salt and burn the bones of any ghost they come across, which means more digging through newspapers in the musty backrooms of small town archives.

Dean still likes his shotguns and pistols, and with the wolf’s help he’s such a good shot that it’s eerie. There’s no real need for that kind of weapon anymore, of course: not with their increased speed and strength. Dean is just used to them, and Sam guesses that his brother takes no small measure of reassurance from the familiar weight in his hands.

Sam himself switches almost entirely over to knives. He has a set of curving claws made at a custom knife dealer: someone they heard of before everything went to hell but never did business with. The claws are almost identical to the ones Dean wore in the cage, and Sam catches his brother looking at them sideways sometimes, but they’re too good a weapon for Sam to give them up.

Besides, those looks are one of the few indications Dean gives that anything happened at the Arena at all.

He tosses fries at Sam’s head to get his attention when they’re in diners, and mouths off to everything in sight, and won’t let go of the keys to Charlie’s pickup. He blasts every Classic Rock station he can find and sulks when they drive through a stretch of the country where they can’t get anything but Reverend Roy’s sermons on the perils of sin. He flirts shamelessly with every half-pretty girl they come across and somehow leaves them smiling even when he always goes home with Sam. Where he belongs.

Sam’s pretty sure that Dean is trying to provoke him. Probably so that he can take the opportunity to lie and tell Sam how fine he is, and geez, jealous much?

Sam already knows he’s jealous. He doesn’t need Dean to tell him that. He’s jealous of the girls in the bars and diners: occasionally of men with whom Dean’s overly friendly. He’s jealous of the bedspread and the shower and the driver’s seat of the fucking pickup.

Dean hasn’t touched him as anything but a kid brother since he stepped out of the cabin’s bathroom in Quinault.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Late winter: the grey days of February. They’re driving through North Dakota on their way to a possible hunt—neither of them calls it a ‘job’ anymore—when Dean suddenly swerves the pickup off an exit ramp and onto a connecting southbound highway.

“What the hell?” Sam demands. Inside him, the cougar hisses its displeasure at the sudden movement.

Dean shrugs, careless. “I want my car back.”

Oh, for crying out loud. “Bobby’s not just going to hand over the keys, Dean.”

“Why not? It’s my car.”

“For the same reason we couldn’t go visit him the last four times we were in the area,” Sam says flatly. “He’d be too busy trying to put holes in us.”

Dean’s eyes darken at that, and Sam feels like an asshole, same way he did when he had to put his foot down about this before. Personally, he doesn't care one way or the other if he ever sees Bobby again—still hasn’t forgiven him for lying about Dean: for being willing to _kill_ Dean—but Dean misses the man.

Sam should have realized that they were going to have a problem when Dean insisted on calling Bobby first thing once they left the cabin. Bobby wasn’t home, but Dean left him a brief message telling him that they were both okay, and to thank him for everything. At the time, Sam thought that would be closure enough, but Dean has proved him wrong by continually attempting to stop by as if Bobby would invite them in for a beer and a few steaks if they rolled up in his front yard.

Funny what Dean picks to be optimistic about.

“Fine,” Dean says finally. “We do it your way. But I’m not going another damn day without my baby.”

“My way,” Sam repeats blankly. “What the hell is ‘my way’?” As far as he remembers, he’s never had a plan for this.

“You’ll figure something out,” Dean says, and does his best to get the pickup up to sixty.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Thankfully, Sam doesn’t need to come up with a brilliant plan. When they call Bobby’s place, no one answers, and a cautious tour of the perimeter of the property tells them that the man isn’t home. Hasn’t _been_ home for about a week judging by the papers Sam can see piled up on the porch.

“He’s out hunting,” Dean says. “Wonder what he’s after.”

Sam’s pretty sure he knows what Bobby’s hunting, and it’s standing right here in his backyard. This is a monumentally stupid idea, he realizes. “The Impala’s going to be easy to track,” he points out, glancing toward his brother.

Dean shrugs and starts toward the salvage yard at an easy lope that Sam matches. It always feels good to run like this, and despite Sam’s apprehension about this entire situation, his chest floods with a warm burst of pleasure. The cougar purrs inside of him: a gentle vibration that rolls through his entire body.

“We’ll change the plates,” Dean tells him as they move past the first outlying cars.

“Oh yeah, brilliant plan,” Sam says sarcastically, keeping an eye out for the pack of watchdogs Bobby’s been keeping ever since Meg proved that one just isn’t enough. “Change the plates. I bet Bobby wouldn’t ever think of that.”

As he slows to a stroll, Dean shoots him a condescending look. “He’s not hunting us, dude.”

Sam is saved from having to point out all the ways that Bobby is—that he _must_ be, that there’s no other logical thing for the man to do—by the fact that Dean picks that moment to spot his precious car. Sam is slightly surprised by the way that his own gut warms at the sight of those sleek black lines.

 **::Blackrumblefastrunnerhome,::** the cougar says with a note of supreme satisfaction.

“Did you miss me, baby?” Dean coos, running one hand along the Impala’s hood. Then, with a good-natured snort, he mutters, “No, I don’t love her more than you, furrball.”

Despite himself, Sam relaxes even further. Dean doesn’t talk to the wolf out loud much, and it’s always nice to hear. Although the cougar routinely shares Sam’s mouth and his motor controls, so far Dean has been as much of a control freak about driving his own body as he is about their transportation. Sam understands why Dean and the wolf would be moving more carefully in that department, but he misses Geri’s curiosity and eagerness.

Especially now that the cougar has told him stories about ‘littlerunner’ from its time as pure spirit. He really wants to hear from Geri just how an incorporeal being manages to get itself stuck inside a beehive.

Smiling slightly, Sam comes up to lay a hand on the Impala himself. The metal is chill against his skin despite the sun, but he remembers how hot it can get in the summer. Remembers the car overheating one year in Arizona when he was twelve: steam pouring from underneath the hood while Dad swore at it and Dean dug around in the trunk for a bottle of coolant he swore was there.

“How does she look?” he asks.

Dean pops the hood and disappears. A moment later, his voice comes back with, “Nice. Looks like Bobby replaced that damned fan belt. Or was that you?”

Like Sam was in any kind of condition to work on the car when he had it. But they have an unspoken agreement to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to those horrible six months when Sam thought Dean was dead, so all he says is, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Huh. Oil looks good. Wiper fluid, coolant … if she’s got fuel, we’re set.”

“And you’re going to start her how?” Sam asks, leaning on the roof. It feels good to do that. To do it _here_ , in the salvage yard with Dean under the Impala’s hood. It’s just a stolen moment, an illusion of normality, but Sam will take what he can get.

“Key. You remember where the pegboard is, right?”

Sam sighs. “Bobby wouldn’t leave the key to the Impala on the pegboard, man.” When is Dean going to get it into his head that, as far as Bobby is concerned, they’re just another thing to hunt now?

“Just go check, all right?” Dean mutters, cross, and Sam goes.

He kicks at the dust as he walks, frustrated by his brother’s refusal to face up to reality in this—in everything—and the cougar offers, **::DeanMate knows BobbyHunter better. Maybe—::**

 _Maybe nothing_ , Sam shoots back.

The cougar sniffs. **::He would not be able to hurt us anyway. He is too slow and old and fat.::**

 _Have you even_ looked _at my memories?_ Sam demands incredulously. _Bobby has a fucking steel trap for a mind. He’ll come up with something._

The cougar considers that for a moment, and Sam catches the familiar, ghostly sensation of it rifling through his mind.

 _See?_ he thinks. _He’s dangerous._

 **::He would make a good ally.::**

Sam clenches his jaw. _Oh, for fuck’s—not you too! We’re_ not _talking to him. End of conversation._

The cougar floods him with knowing amusement as he edges carefully into the oversized steel shed that Bobby uses as his garage and workshop, but doesn’t push the subject anymore. Good thing: Sam’s too busy looking for any traps to hold up his end of the conversation. The garage seems safe enough, but nervous adrenaline still floods Sam’s body when he comes to a halt next to the lopsided desk Bobby uses as his office.

There’s a pegboard on the wall behind the desk where Bobby keeps the keys of the cars he’s working on, and Sam scans them quickly, ready to tell Dean he’s going to have to hotwire the Impala. He’s so sure the keys won’t be there that he’s already turning around when what he saw registers.

The Impala’s key, hanging on the very first rusted nail on the board.

It’s a trap—it _has_ to be—but nothing happens when he gingerly grabs it down and skitters back half a dozen steps.

What the fuck is Bobby playing at? He had to know that they’d come here—Dean’s like an obsessed parent with the damned car, and nothing in the world could ever change that. And yet Sam is suddenly certain that there’s going to be gas in the Impala’s tank.

He heads back outside slowly, frowning and turning the key over in his hands.

Dean is already sitting behind the Impala’s wheel, and when he sees Sam, he leans out the window and shouts, “Dude, he kept my tapes!” in the same, excited voice that Sam guesses most kids use on Christmas morning when they discover Santa Claus has come and gone.

Sam finds the note three hours later, when Dean is inside a Wendy’s picking them up dinner. It’s tucked inside the front cover of their father's journal, which was lying underneath the passenger seat in an oversized envelope addressed to him in Bobby’s meticulous handwriting.

 

 _Sam,_

 _If you’re reading this, then you aren’t too far gone yet to understand what I’m telling you. I ain’t gonna chase after you unless you make me. So don’t. Stay away from people best as you can. Keep your head down. And for God’s sake stay away from hunters._

 

Sam reads the note four times and then crumples it up and tosses it in a convenient trashcan. As he strolls back to the car, hands shoved in his pockets, he finds himself thinking well of Bobby for the first time in almost a year. It isn’t enough to make him feel safe contacting the man—and he’s pretty sure Bobby doesn’t want them to: wants to be able to plead ignorance if anyone comes looking for John Winchester’s boys—but it’s a start.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Having the Impala back is good in some ways, worse in others. It’s comforting: familiar. With the windows rolled up and the heater cranked, the old smells in the car leave him feeling almost boneless. He keeps falling asleep and waking up with a ghostly purr rumbling through him.

But with the Impala stirring up all his memories of before—before Vincent, before the wolf, before Stanford—the differences are that much more evident. The cocky, easy-going mask that Dean never takes off looks more and more like a caricature. Sam talks and words come back from the driver’s side—with the right cadence and inflections and that smirk firmly in place—but there’s nothing behind them. No connection.

Either Dean is receding from him or Sam himself is fading, and sometimes he feels so damned alone that the cougar has to stretch itself painfully wide to fill up all the empty spaces inside of him.

He misses his brother.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Finhberg, VA, they run into their first demon. It smells exactly the way Dean described it to him—like misery and loss and everything hurtful—and when they see the girl in the light blue summer dress they both know what she is. If Dean had been one with the wolf back in Jefferson, Sam realizes, he would have known the yellow-eyed son of a bitch was in Dad from the second they threw open the door.

They tail the demon back to an apartment—the girl’s, or maybe someone else’s that the demon killed—and Sam shoves it up against the wall and holds it there. He doesn’t want to kill the girl unless there’s no other option.

The demon snarls at him, wordless cries of rage and hate, but Sam ignores it and turns his head to his brother. “Get the journal, would you?”

“What for?” Dean asks. He’s all deceptive laziness and the white flash of teeth as he studies the demon.

It pushes forward, both body and mind, and Sam slams the girl’s body back into place while the cougar folds the power harmlessly around them.

“I’m gonna exorcise her,” Sam grunts.

Dean clears his throat and says, clearly and distinctly, “ _Sacerdos ab Ordinario delegatus, rite confessus …_ ”

He memorized it. Sometime between the Arena and now, Dean memorized an exorcism. The precaution speaks of a deep-seated fear, and a determination to protect himself, and for a moment Sam is back in that hallway with Dean trembling beside him: demons lining the walls and no way out, no strength left to fight, no words to ward them off.

 _Of course he memorized—_

And that’s when the demon shoves, sending him flying. Sam hits the wall heavily enough that the plaster cracks in a near-perfect indent of his body. He falls to the floor and then shakes his head to clear it.

When he looks up, the demon has Dean pinned to another wall. It doesn’t make sense. Dean is easily stronger than a single demon, but for some reason he's just standing there: silent and unresisting as the demon whispers in his ear.

Then Sam picks up on _what_ it’s saying and everything makes sense.

“… slut. Oh yeah, I heard all about you, baby. Trained you up good, didn’t they? Pretty whore. Lilith’s going to love you. Pretty little puppy to play with.”

Then Sam is there, ripping it away from his brother. This time he doesn’t hesitate, curling his hand around its throat and gripping. It claws at his arms, eyes bulging as he chokes it, and he tightens up further.

The demon can’t make its body breathe anymore, but there’s nothing stopping it from exploding out from the girl’s mouth in an attempt to flee. Sam drops the girl, using every bit of speed that the cougar offers, and reaches into the smoke. At the same time, the cougar shoves forward with a shrill hunting whistle and gold light sheathes Sam’s fingers.

The demon feels like cotton against his skin, and he rips at it easily. The consistency changes as he tears, thickening into something viscous and oily. Its dying shriek fills his head for a few seconds and then cuts off. Pulling his hands free, Sam watches what’s left of the demon dribble to the floor in a puddle. In a few minutes, it will have dried out again and there’ll be nothing left but a thin coating of dust.

The girl the demon was possessing is coughing weakly, one hand against her throat and the other propping her up against the floor. After a single glance to make sure she’s still alive, Sam hurries back to his brother. Dean is still leaning against the wall, staring off into space with glassy, shadowed eyes.

Griping his arm, Sam shouts, “Dean? _Dean_!”

“I’m fine,” Dean mumbles faintly. Then, shaking himself, he tries for a smile. “Spaced out for a second there. Sorry.”

 _No, don’t do this. Fucking_ talk _to me._ Heart still beating too quickly, Sam swallows and starts, “Dean—”

“Let’s get out of here before she calls the cops on us,” Dean interrupts, and ducks out from between Sam and the wall to start for the door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam watches his brother carefully for the rest of the day. Dean’s a little dulled around the edges at first, but he perks up after a few hours. By the time they pull back into the motel parking lot, he’s his usual, artificially cheerful self again. Sam would think that his brother managed to completely shore up his walls again, except for the fact that Dean slides out of the Impala and then tosses him the keys for the first time since they got it back from Bobby.

“Go get dinner, bitch,” he says, heading for their room. “I’m taking a nap.”

Sam stands on his side of the Impala for a moment after Dean disappears inside, debating whether or not to go in after him.

 **::He will talk when he is ready,::** the cougar tells him.

“Yeah,” Sam sighs, finally shutting his door and heading around to the driver’s side. “But he’s gonna drive us nuts first.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean is sitting on the edge of his bed when Sam comes back in with the pizzas. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, and Sam _knows_. He can smell it.

Heart beating too quickly in his chest, he walks to the table with measured, deliberate steps and sets down the pizza boxes. Then he turns to look at his brother.

Dean’s eyes are wide and unfocused. His skin is pale. There’s a fine tremor in his hands.

“Dean,” Sam says, and Dean jumps as if he hadn’t noticed Sam was in the room. Probably didn’t.

Dean blinks twice, confusion warring with the fear on his face, and then he tries, “Hey, is that pizza?”

 _Enough is fucking enough,_ Sam thinks, and now that it’s clear Dean will go on denying this to his grave if they let him, the cougar finally agrees.

 **::We will talk now,::** it says.

Sam moves toward his brother, meaning to sit down next to him, and Dean shoots off the bed before he can get close.

“Don’t touch me!” he snaps, and instantly looks surprised by his own reaction. Faltering, he says, “Look, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, and—”

“Don’t,” Sam says sharply. “Don’t keep lying to me, Dean, don’t you _dare_. I was there, and I know what they did to you, and you aren’t going to get over it until you talk to me.”

“I’m fine,” Dean protests.

“I call bullshit.”

“I am. Really.”

Sam looks at his brother’s pale, pinched expression, and understands that even now, with his defenses crumbling to dust around him, Dean isn’t going to give in unless Sam _makes_ him. And he knows exactly how to do that. He just doesn’t want to.

 **::We have to,::** the cougar says, but it doesn’t come forward. This is something that Sam needs to do himself, and they both know it.

 _Okay,_ Sam thinks. _Okay._

Squaring his jaw, he makes himself start forward again. “Okay, great,” he says, keeping his voice light and unsympathetic. “You’re fine. Let’s celebrate.”

“What?” Dean licks his lips, watching Sam’s approach warily. He hesitates until it’s too late to get away and then Sam is there, pushing him up against the wall and unbuckling his jeans.

“Wait,” Dean babbles, going even paler. “Jesus, Sam, hang on, I—”

“Why? You’re fine, I’m fine. Come on, Dean. Let’s fuck.”

Dean jerks as though Sam just slapped him, eyes going wounded and betrayed. He still hasn’t said it, though, so Sam unzips him and reaches inside his pants. Dean’s hands scramble at the wall and he blurts, “No, stop!”

Sam immediately takes his hand back. His heartbeat is painfully fast in his chest, and all he wants to do is apologize. Instead, he hardens his expression. “You aren’t fine,” he says. “Say it.”

Shutting his eyes, Dean turns his head away. His throat works as he swallows. “I-I’m not,” he whispers haltingly. The admission sends shudders through him and suddenly he’s crying. “I’m not fine, I’m not—”

Sam stops his increasingly panicked words with a kiss. It’s a light, careful thing—just a brief press of lips—and he’s going to pull back at the first sign that this is making it worse, but Dean’s mouth opens for him. Dean’s hands come up and hover inches away from Sam’s face like he’s afraid to touch, or maybe isn’t sure he’s allowed. Sam kisses him until he tastes his brother’s tears on his lips and then pulls back. He cups Dean’s face and wipes across his cheeks with his thumbs and Dean cries harder.

“Do you want me to stop?” Sam murmurs. “I’ll back off if you want.”

In answer, Dean yanks Sam closer and buries his face in the side of his neck. Sam ghosts his hands down his brother’s sides and then, scenting Dean’s sudden spike of apprehension in the air, puts them up on the wall instead. He lets Dean cling to him, doing his best to radiate calm. The cougar’s purr fills Sam’s head, and he thinks that Dean might somehow be catching it as well because his brother’s desperate clutch loosens and his tears start to taper off.

When Dean has been quiet and still for a few minutes, Sam says, “I’m not going to force you to talk about it. But I want you to stop pretending with me.”

Dean mumbles something into Sam’s shoulder that comes out so soft and garbled not even his sharpened hearing can pick it up.

“Didn’t catch that, man,” he says.

Dean lifts his head a little, eyes fastened on Sam’s shoulder, and repeats, “I pretended. With them. That it was you. It … helped. Sometimes.”

Sam isn’t sure what to say to that, so he’s silent.

Taking a shaky breath, Dean continues, “And now every time I—I think about touching you, I—it’s like their hands on still on me.”

If Sam gets the chance, he’s going to hunt down every one of those bastards and make them hurt. The cougar rumbles in agreement.

“We don’t have to do anything,” Sam says. “I love you, and nothing’s gonna change that.”

“Damn it, Sam, you don’t—” Dean’s eyes flicker up to him finally, gleaming gold, and Sam can taste his brother’s frustrated anger on his own tongue. “I _want_ you. I want you so fucking much, and I can’t get my damned head in the game.”

“You will,” Sam says, and starts to move back. “You just need time.”

“No.” Dean’s hand shoots out and catches his wrist. His eyes are still terrified, but his mouth is set in a flat, determined line. “Now. I want.” He brings Sam’s hand down to his gaping pants. “Please.”

Oh God.

Sam bites his lip and makes himself look at the wall instead of his brother’s face. He isn’t strong enough to resist the pleading there. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he says, but he isn’t pulling his hand free. In fact, he’s slowly worming his fingers down beneath the warm denim of Dean’s jeans.

Looks like staring at the wall isn’t doing much for his willpower after all.

“Fuck you, Sam. This is my choice, and I’m not letting those sons of bitches fuck us up.”

Sam’s fingertips brush against something hot and smooth—something that twitches when he touches it—and his mouth goes dry. “Slow,” he manages. “We’ll go slow.”

Dean widens his stance and squares his jaw. “Just get me off, asshole.”

Sam can tell from Dean’s voice that he’s looking at this like some magic fix: one quick hand job and he’ll be fine. It isn’t going to be that simple, and if Sam was any kind of brother he’d put his foot down. Then again, if he were any kind of brother, he wouldn’t be getting hard wrapping his hand around his brother’s dick.

 **::Mate,::** the cougar purrs. **::He needs to feel good. We can make him feel good.::**

It’s right. In a way, Dean’s right as well. He needs to be reminded that sex can be something good: a release instead of a chore. It isn’t going to be the cure-all he wants it to be, but it will help.

 **::Go slow,::** the cougar reminds him, and then withdraws, giving him the illusion of privacy. It isn’t strictly necessary—half the time Sam can’t remember what it was like to be alone in his head anymore—but he appreciates the thought.

Sam focuses on his brother again, watching Dean carefully as he draws his cock out from his pants so that he can get a better grip. When he tightens his hold, wrapping his hand around that half-hard flesh, Dean’s face goes stiff. He’s still hardening in Sam’s hand, but his eyes are starting to glaze over. A quick glance down tells Sam that his brother is also digging his fingers into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

“Do you need me to stop?” he asks, unsure if he’ll be able to at this point. Dean feels so good in his hand: full and thick and beautifully curving. He’s so fucking irresistible, leaning against the wall with his head back and his lips parted and his hips tilted toward Sam.

Dean shakes his head sharply. “No, I can—I can do this.”

Rubbing his thumb across the unbelievably soft crown of his brother’s cock, Sam says, “Are you sure?”

“Stop pussying around and do it, bitch.” The words are all Dean, but the voice is wrong: at once too breathy and too tight.

Sam draws his hand slowly down his brother’s length, testing, and Dean thumps his head against the wall with a swear. Readjusting his grip, Sam pulls again, and then again. He sets up a slow rhythm, watching his hand slide over his brother’s swiftly rising cock. His hand seems made for this, strong enough and large enough to hold Dean easily: to surround him while his thumb moves in a teasing path over the slit and then down underneath the head. He gets caught up in the sensations and the sight of it—of how responsive Dean is for him—and when he glances up again Dean’s face is screwed up like this hurts.

He hasn’t said to stop yet, though, and Sam is pretty sure that if he _does_ try to put the brakes on without Dean’s say-so, he’s going to have Dean pissed at him as well as splintering apart. That’s the last thing he needs. So instead of stepping back he slows his caresses.

Then, keeping his voice low and soothing, he calls, “Dean.”

Dean shudders at the sound of his name, turning his face to the side a little.

“No,” Sam says more sternly than he means to. “No more hiding. Look at me.”

Dean’s eyes are wide—dazed—and his mouth gapes as he pants. There’s an edge of panic in his expression, and confusion, as though he isn’t sure where he is. Who he’s with.

Still working Dean with measured jerks, Sam cups his brother’s face with his free hand. “Hey,” he says.

Dean blinks, struggling to focus.

“Hey, man, it’s just me. It’s Sam.”

“Sammy?” Dean breathes. His voice is folded in on itself: uncertain. Then he blinks again, and Sam feels _seen_ for the first time in months. This is his brother. This is _Dean._

Sam’s chest loosens and then seizes up again when Dean’s eyes immediately dart away.

“No. With me.” He strokes his thumb over Dean’s cheekbone. “Right here.”

Dean brings his gaze back slowly, and there’s still a cringing fear there. Even worse than the fear is the open vulnerability Sam can see in those wide, green eyes. In the trembling of Dean’s lips and the way he has to work to swallow.

“It’s only me,” Sam tells him, leaning in to leave a lingering kiss on the bridge of his brother’s nose. He moves his hand and Dean’s whole body moves with it, like a wave. His brother’s eyelashes flutter.

“I—Sam, I can’t, I—”

But Dean’s hands are on Sam’s hips now, holding him there, and Sam can smell his brother’s arousal rising through the edgy fear. And he knows Dean well enough to know when he means ‘no’ and when he means ‘don’t make me look at myself’. When he’s terrified of being pushed into something he doesn’t want to acknowledge.

Sam wants—he _needs_ —to know what that is. It can’t be an admission of how much what happened to him in the Arena hurt because Dean already admitted as much. No, there’s something else here: some last, festering bit of shrapnel in the wound. It has to come out.

“Why?” he asks, speeding the stroke. Dean gasps and widens his legs a little. When Sam’s fingers drag over the head of his cock, there’s a smear of precome and a moment later he can smell it in the air: heavy and full of that solid, Dean scent.

“Why can’t you?” Sam prods.

If Dean pushes him away, he’ll go. As much as he thinks that his brother needs this, he’ll stop if Dean really wants him to.

But Dean keeps hanging onto Sam’s hips: the trembles in his muscles and the rapid rise and fall of his chest his only movement. “Please,” he begs, and this is it. Dean is finally shaking apart, all the pieces that have been broken or bent are dropping away and Sam is here, hands out and ready to catch them.

“Why?” he pushes. “Because you don’t want this?”

“You shouldn’t—not with—not with me.”

“I love you, Dean,” Sam says. He’s made a point of saying it at least once a day, but from the way that Dean shudders violently, this is the first time he heard it. He tries to turn his head away again and Sam slips his hand from his brother’s cheek to cup his chin.

“You’re my brother and my mate and I love you.”

That shudder rips through Dean’s body again and he pants, “I don’t—you deserve someone—I’m not—I’m just—” He shuts his mouth, eyes frantic and darting for somewhere to run.

Sam stills his hand but continues to hold Dean’s cock loosely. “You’re what?”

“I—I don’t know, I wasn’t—”

“No lies,” Sam says sharply. “What are you, Dean? Tell me.”

“Whore,” Dean breathes. “I’m a fucking whore.”

“Because of what they did to you?” Sam presses. They’re close to it now: the infection. He can almost smell it.

“Because I liked it,” Dean gasps out.

And there it is.

Sam takes his hand off of his brother’s cock and cradles his face. “You’re not a whore.”

“I liked it,” Dean repeats, obviously appalled by his own words, “I got off on it.”

“Because it was sex, Dean. It was sex, and your body doesn’t always distinguish between things you want and things that feel good. And,” he adds as something occurs to him, “You were drugged twenty-four hours a day. How much do you want to bet Vincent added something to the Gleipnir to up your libido?”

“I shouldn’t have,” Dean repeats stubbornly, and then, “You should—Sam, you can find someone else, someone better—”

Sam tightens his grip on his brother’s face, cutting off his words. He’s certain that particular thought has been running through Dean’s mind ever since he first brought it up months ago at the Arena, but this is the first time since they’ve both been made whole that he’s actually voiced it. Sam is surprised at how much more it hurts now, like a piece of his soul is threatening to tear loose. He understands, wholly and completely, why true berserkers never survive the loss of their mate because the mere thought of having to go without Dean makes him feel like he’s bleeding out internally.

Speaking very quietly and carefully, he says, “Don’t you _ever_ suggest that to me again, do you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says in an uncharacteristically meek voice.

Sam glances down at Dean’s dick and it’s still half-hard, despite the turn their conversation just took. He debates leaving it for now, considering this new problem, and then decides that it would be stupid to stop. If he doesn’t finish this, Dean’s going to find some way to twist it around until he thinks the reason Sam stopped is because he was disgusted by Dean’s admission.

“I’m going to finish this now, Dean, and then we’re going to take a shower and you’re going to get in bed, okay?”

“Sammy—”

“That wasn’t really a question,” Sam tells him, and then reaches down to take him in hand again.

Dean’s breath punches out audibly and his hands scramble for Sam’s shoulders. He isn’t trying to push him away, just anchoring himself, so Sam ignores it in favor of stroking his brother back to fullness. This time, there’s no teasing. He uses the rough strokes that he knows, from years of growing up in too close quarters, are the ones Dean likes best until his brother’s hips are pumping him forward into Sam’s hand and Dean is making breathy little sounds that are almost, but not quite, moans.

Then Sam slows, sliding his thumb over the head of Dean’s cock and pressing against the slick slit.

“I want you to keep your eyes on me, okay?” he says. “I want you to look at me, and feel my hand. Only me.”

Dean nods his head jerkily, and Sam can see him fight to focus. When Dean’s eyes are as clear as he thinks they’ll get, he starts working his brother’s cock harder. The renewed speed and roughness drag a harsh, needy pant from Dean’s throat and his hands slip from Sam’s shoulders to bunch in his shirt.

It’s ludicrous, but Sam is just as on edge as Dean from nothing more than the sight of what he’s doing to his brother. Dean’s bruised, hesitant eyes are locked on his face, and there are no more walls between them: no more barriers or lies. Just Dean’s reluctant moans and Sam’s increasingly rapid breathing.

“Love you,” Sam pants. “Always. Not getting rid of me again, not fucking _ever_ —Dean—mine, my mate—my—”

He jacks his fist again and Dean quakes. A hot wash of semen spills over Sam’s wrist and against his shirt and Dean cries out. Sam’s name spills from his lips like a benediction, like an affirmation, and Sam follows him over with a noise that sounds foreign to his own ears: half-yowl and half-guttural moan. He wants to slump forward over Dean’s body and doesn’t, still cognizant enough not to want to block Dean in too completely.

He does brace one hand on the wall, though, and gently rests his forehead against Dean’s as he strokes his brother through the aftershocks. Dean’s eyes are startled on his, but the fear scent is finally fading.

“You okay?” Sam asks, rubbing his cheek against Dean’s affectionately.

“Just you,” Dean breathes. Wonder smoothes his face, making him look almost innocent. “It was just you.”

Sam kisses him.


	35. Confessions

Sam has to help his brother over to the bathroom afterward: Dean’s legs are shaky and he’s exhausted. In the shower, with Sam’s naked body looming just behind his, he starts to fidget, and Sam knows that the fear and the hurt and the self-loathing that he somehow managed to temporarily push away are creeping back. When Dean can’t look him in the eye as they towel off, he also knows that things are going to get worse before they get better.

Dean falls into his bed and lies there, his body an awkward, rigid line under the sheets. Somehow, when Sam sits down on the side of the bed, he manages to go even stiffer, eyes staring straight ahead and away from Sam.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sam says.

“I know,” Dean answers, but he still flinches when Sam puts a hand on his shoulder.

Sam wants to crawl in next to him and hold him: wants to lick trails across his body and wash him clean of whatever imaginary taint he feels on his skin.

Slinking forward again, the cougar adds to that longing an image of them both tangled together, Sam lying half on top of his brother while Dean’s hand strokes his hair. Sometimes, Sam thinks that it longs for that closeness even more than he does. For something that was pure spirit just several months ago, it’s uncommonly fond of the physical side of things: not the sex necessarily, but the intimacy that comes in the lazy moments afterwards.

But Dean isn’t ready.

“I’ll be right over here, okay?” Sam says, moving to his own bed.

Dean doesn’t respond.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In the dark, Sam wakes suddenly without knowing why. Then, as his sleeping mind catches up to what happened before he went to sleep, everything comes into sharp focus. When he leans up on one elbow and looks over to his brother’s bed, Dean is moving restlessly and making soft little whimpering sounds.

Sam kicks off the covers and stumbles to his brother’s side. He puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder without thinking and Dean lets out a hurt, keening noise and tries to burrow into the bed.

 _Stupid_ , Sam berates himself, pulling his hand back. Then, out loud, he calls, “Dean! Wake up, man.”

Dean comes awake with a start, eyes wide and unseeing. Part of him is still trapped in the nightmare. Sam stays still while his brother pulls completely free and after a few minutes Dean blinks up at him with a dazed expression.

“Sam?” he says, and rubs a hand over his mouth. “What—”

“You were dreaming,” Sam says. Then, because he doesn’t want any lies between them anymore, he adds, “Remembering.”

Dean knows perfectly well what he was doing—Sam can see it in the twist of his lips—but he only says, “Maybe.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam offers.

Dean rolls over and shows Sam his back. Forbidding, broad shoulders.

“Yeah, okay.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They fall into a routine.

The carefree mask Dean clung to before is gone, maybe shattered forever. He fluctuates between being pathetically open and raw and going stone-like and expressionless: tips from one end of the seesaw to the other abruptly and without warning. He flinches away from accidental physical contact with strangers, and gets so nervous in bars and restaurants that Sam eventually just starts making sure they eat take out or drive through. At night, they stay in and Dean teaches himself new card tricks, learns to dance a coin across the back of his knuckles, cleans the weapons, while Sam reads.

They share some fumbling kisses, and once another hand job that Sam abandons halfway through because Dean can’t manage to keep his head in the here and now. He doesn’t try again after that and Dean doesn’t ask him to.

His brother has nightmares every night and Sam wakes with them. Sometimes, it’s even more often than that, and Sam spends a restless night getting up every half hour or so to wake Dean up again until Dean mutters, “Fuck this shit,” and goes outside to fiddle with the Impala until sunrise.

Sam keeps watch from the motel window while the cougar rubs along his insides with reassuring murmurs and purrs that aren’t nearly enough to warm the cold, aching core of him. It’s the only time he lets himself cry the way he always wants to when he thinks about how damaged Dean is.

 _He’s never going to talk to me, is he?_ he asks the cougar.

 **::He will,::** the cougar promises, and Sam feels the phantom rasp of a sandpaper tongue against his cheek. **::Just give him time.::**

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

One afternoon, in late August and almost exactly three months after Dean’s breakdown, they’re driving through Kansas on their way to Nebraska. It’s painfully bright outside and they’re both wearing sunglasses. They’d be wearing them anyway, of course: it’s easier to hide their eyes that way than to force the gold out.

Sam is thinking about how sweet the air coming through his window smells, thinking of all the stories it carries—of the cars that drove past before them, and the hawk flying high overhead, and the farm off in the distance to the right where there are cattle and sheep and even a few pigs—when Dean turns down the radio.

Sam glances over, but his brother is in one of his stone phases: inscrutable behind the shades.

After a few minutes, Dean says, “There was this woman who wanted me to hurt her. She wanted me to leave bruises.” A tick in his cheek jumps.

Sam’s stomach tightens and the cougar stiffens inside him, alert. They both wait to see if there’s going to be more, but Dean is just driving: acting like he didn’t say anything.

“It isn’t your fault,” Sam says finally. “That wasn’t you, Dean.”

Dean shrugs and turns the music back up and doesn’t say anything else until they cross the state line at nightfall.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After that, Dean is like a boulder that’s been tipped over the edge of a hill and is gathering downward momentum. He offers the sordid details of his time in the Arena in snapshots, dropping them like breadcrumbs all over the place. Not just about the women and the men, but about particularly bad fights in the cage, and about Dr. Thorsen’s little experiments.

They’ll be talking about whatever hunt they’re on and Dean will look away for a second and toss it out there— _held me down and fucked me on the table; had his heart in my hand and he was screaming for his mother; put me in the tank, the fucking water tank, swear to God I’d rather burn than drown_ —and Sam will tell him that it wasn’t his fault, and Dean will nod and pick the thread of conversation right back up again. He’ll toss anecdotes over the Impala’s roof when they’re filling up at the gas station, eyes distant on the horizon. He never says anything when Sam can read him, of course: only when the steel mask he hides behind is firmly in place. When he’s protected.

After a while Sam gets the impression that his brother isn’t talking to him in an attempt to get better, but because he’s looking for something that will push Sam away.

So Sam listens, and he always tells Dean it wasn’t his fault, and if the revelation is uncommonly bad, he’ll add, “I don’t love you any less,” which is probably the girliest thing he’s ever said, but Dean needs to hear it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They’re in the middle of digging up a grave on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio. It’s January 20th, four days before Dean’s birthday, and Sam is really glad for the extra strength and warmth the cougar is providing because otherwise this would be a miserable, endless job. Maybe impossible, considering how frozen the ground is.

They’re about halfway down when Dean leans on his shovel and glances up at the sky. Sam pauses as well, knowing by his brother’s posture that he’s about to offer another crumb. The cougar perks up, and Sam’s head fills with the image of its ears swiveling forward.

“When Hank fucked me,” Dean says, and then stops, breath fogging out.

Sam waits. The tip of the cougar’s tail twitches.

“When Hank fucked me I came.”

Sam has heard some fucked up, hurtful shit out of his brother’s mouth, but nothing has ever punched his breath out like this before. He sees Hanks’ hateful, sneering face in his mind, and he can read between his brother’s words to how it must have been, how Hank would have talked while he did it, would have called Dean things like ‘slut’ and ‘whore,’ and Dean came, and that’s the start of the infection right there.

If Hank were here right now, Sam would kill him all over again.

 **::We would kill him slower,::** the cougar growls.

All this time, Sam has been assuming that Dean understands the mechanics of gay sex: he’s had enough of it. But now, looking at the way Dean is waiting for Sam to be disgusted by him, or to hate him, he wonders if he was wrong. Dean was never interested in guys before: Sam knows that he’s an aberration for his brother in that department. There’s no reason Dean ever would have done the research. Not before the Arena, and certainly not after, when he thought he already knew everything.

“There’s this thing called a prostate,” Sam says, and Dean makes an incredulous scoffing sound.

“I know what a fucking prostate is, Sam.”

“Did you know it was a sexual organ?”

Dean starts to glance at Sam before he catches himself and looks away again. After a moment, he grudgingly grunts, “What’s your point?”

“It’s the male version of a g-spot, Dean,” Sam says. “Stimulate it enough and anyone would get off. It doesn’t mean you liked what Hank was doing. It just means he knew enough about the male anatomy to be hitting you right.” He wants to wince at his own bluntness, but he needs Dean to understand this.

Dean swallows and doesn’t say anything.

“I can’t believe you never experimented with any of those girls you brought home,” Sam adds into the silence.

Shifting a little, Dean admits, “There was this one chick, she uh, wanted to put her fingers in me while she blew me.”

“And you said no?”

Dean shrugs. “Didn’t sound like a huge turn on.” Then, finally looking over at Sam, he asks, “You gonna say it?”

For a moment, Sam doesn’t know what his brother is talking about. Then the cougar nudges him. Sam’s chest flutters with something he doesn’t quite recognize as hope.

Meeting Dean’s dead, shuttered eyes, he says, “It isn’t your fault, and I don’t love you any less.”

Dean looks at him for a moment longer and then turns away and picks up his shovel again. “Come on, Sammy: this bitch isn’t gonna dig herself up.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That night, when Sam leaves the bathroom to head to bed, he finds his wrist grabbed in a gentle but firm grip. Startled and a little confused, he glances over at his brother.

“What?”

Dean just tugs him and steps back. Sam follows slowly, chest tightening with growing uncertainty as he realizes where they’re headed.

“Dean,” he says, starting to shake his head.

“Not that,” Dean says. “Just—oh, come on, man, don’t make me say it.”

“I need to know what you want,” Sam tells him softly, still resisting.

“Sammymate come sleepclose.” The words come out of Dean’s mouth, but they’re not his. For the first time since the dreams, Sam is hearing Geri. Its voice is shy, almost hesitant, but it’s able to say what Dean can’t. “Need warmth. Need Sammyscent.”

This time, when Dean tugs, Sam goes.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean isn’t any better around strangers, but after that it’s eerie how quickly he improves with Sam. When they’re alone, it’s almost like old times again. Well, except for the kissing.

And Dean _likes_ kissing, Sam is startled to learn. He could take hours mapping out Sam’s mouth and does, then pauses for a breath and licks his lips—God, the _mouth_ on him—and starts all over again.

It’s difficult when Dean is licking into him like that, but Sam somehow manages to keep his hands above the waist. He limits himself to tentative touches the first few times they make out, and then after Dean makes a frustrated noise and shoves Sam’s hand up underneath his shirt, wanders into bolder explorations.

One afternoon in late September, Dean pulls over by a rundown field in Vermont and strips off his shirt. It’s an abnormally warm day, and sweat is trickling down Sam’s back as he joins his brother. Dean throws his shirt in Sam’s face with a grin and then sprints off, laughing, and Sam gives chase. He catches his brother—or Dean lets himself be caught, he isn’t sure which—in the center of the field and Dean lets out an oomph of air as they go down.

Sam has about two seconds of triumph before Dean flips him over and crawls on top of him, settling his weight back and trapping Sam’s legs. Dean’s eyes are green, Sam sees as he looks up: impossibly so when framed against the blue sky. Then Dean tips forward and starts kissing him. Slow and thorough at first, and then faster: hungry and almost desperate.

Sam is so caught up in the things Dean is doing with his mouth that it takes him a few seconds to realize Dean is opening his pants. He groans into his brother’s mouth and then, when Dean’s got his fly down and is reaching for it—when it’s clear that he’s serious about this—Sam breaks away and grips his brother’s wrist, halting him.

“Are you sure?” he pants. “Because I can wait, I don’t—”

“Shut up,” Dean says fondly, and Sam does.

Dean’s always been good with his hands, and no matter how vilely it happened, he’s more than practiced at this. He brings Sam to the edge and keeps him there, kissing him with the scent of green, growing things all around them and the blue sky above them. They’re hidden in the high grass, and safe, and there’s a smudge of dirt on his brother’s collarbone from when Sam tackled him.

“Let me,” Sam pleads through his brother’s searing kisses. “Damn it, Dean, please, I want to—”

Letting out an amused snort, Dean pulls back and says, “Alright. Fucking freckle fetishist.”

Sam could care less what Dean thinks about his obsession. All he knows is that he needs his mouth on that ginkgo pattern, needs it now, needs to be there when he comes.

Dean’s skin is salty on his tongue, and Sam licks through the sweat to the sweetness underneath: to the earthy, almond flavor that’s so much stronger now that the cougar is with him. The cougar arches inside of him, one languid stretch that goes on and on, riding the sensations with him, and then Dean twists his hand just right and Sam spills with a choked off, shuddering cry.

Afterward, Sam watches warily as Dean rubs at the bite mark he left behind, wondering if Dean is going to freak out: if this is going to drop them all the way back to day one. But Dean just rolls his eyes, mutters, “Possessive much?” and then flops down on top of him and nuzzles into the crook between Sam’s neck and his collarbone.

Sam puts an arm around Dean’s sun-warmed shoulders and smiles.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They trade off on hand jobs like they’ve just discovered their dicks for about a month, hunting if they stumble across anything but otherwise just being together—just healing—and then it’s November. It’s the month Sam associates with Dad’s drinking binges, and Dean’s silent withdrawals. It’s the month of burnings.

He treats the second like a jinxed day, and Dean keeps looking at him strangely when he’s extra careful with him: when he does his best to keep them both as still and silent as possible.

Sam makes Dean stay in the motel room while he gets dinner, as though his brother will be safer there, and when he comes back with a bag of lo mien and beef with broccoli and those dumplings Dean likes, he finds himself ambushed and shoved up against the wall.

“I know what you’re doing,” Dean says. His eyes gleam fiercely. “We aren’t cursed, Sam.”

“No point in testing fate,” Sam responds, thinking of the Chinese on the floor, and of the fact that he’s gonna have to go back out into the world and get some more now.

“Sure there is,” Dean shoots back, and then he’s sinking to his knees, and oh Jesus, not today, not like this.

“Relax, Sammy. Just let me, okay?”

Dean doesn’t give Sam a chance to say no, just pulls him out and sucks him in and it’s just as warm, just as tight and perfect as it was over a year ago. Dean’s hands are on Sam’s hips, holding him in place against the wall, and Dean is setting the pace— _Dean’s_ choice, _Dean’s_ decision—and Sam gets it. He gets that Dean needs to reclaim this for himself, that he needs the control.

And he knows that Dean also understands that he needs to reclaim today. That Sam needs this as much as he does.

Dean swallows when Sam comes, easy and perfect, and then licks him clean while he sags against the wall. When he finally straightens, Sam is recovered enough to haul his brother in for a kiss. He can taste himself on Dean’s tongue, musky with a nutty undertaste. Like almonds.

Dean’s long ago jab was true, he realizes. They do taste alike.

Somehow, it doesn’t bother him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“So, does that smell more like ghost or poltergeist to you?” Sam asks, tilting his face up into the air and trying to get a better handle on the faint scent.

“I want to fuck you,” Dean says.

The air goes out of Sam like he’s been punched. “You what?” he says, looking over.

Dean is leaning against the peeling wall, looking nervous and determined at the same time. It’s been a little over a year since that hand job in the field. Three years since the Arena. It’s forever and at the same time, there’s no way it’s been long enough.

But Dean squares his jaw and repeats it. “I want to fuck you. Tonight.”

“We’re in the middle of a hunt,” Sam tries.

“So?” Dean says, turning to head for the door. “And it’s a poltergeist, dumbass.”

Sam recovers in a moment and chases after him. “Dean, you can’t even stand to be touched.”

“I seem to remember you touching me last night,” Dean says, but he knows what Sam means. It’s obvious from the flat quality to his voice.

“Yeah, and this morning when that woman put her hand on your arm, you jerked back so fast you spilled coffee on yourself.”

Dean stops moving and rubs the back of his neck. “Saw that, huh?”

“I see that every day, Dean!” Sam responds, exasperated. “We still can’t eat out because you’re too nervous in public to get anything down. Some old lady brushes against you on the street and you panic. A guy looks at you crossways and you break out in a cold sweat. And you want to have sex.”

“It’s different with you,” Dean protests. “You’re my mate.” He frowns briefly and then corrects himself. “Brother.”

“I still don’t think you’re ready.” Sam draws his eyebrows together as something occurs to him. “I haven’t—I haven’t been saying anything to make you think I wasn’t, um, satisfied, have I?”

“Jesus Christ, Sam, can we _not_ have this conversation? I mean, seriously?” Scowling, Dean starts forward again. “All I said was I wanted to fuck and you have to grow a pair of tits.”

“I’m serious, Dean!” Sam says, chasing after his brother. He catches Dean by the arm and turns him. “Have I been sending out some kind of signal or something? Because I’m fine, man. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

“Yeah, well I won’t,” Dean snaps. He moves and Sam finds himself shoved against the wall, the impact raining plaster down onto his hair. Then Dean’s mouth is on his in a feral kiss that Sam is too stunned by to properly react to. After a moment, Dean relents, drawing back enough to bite teasingly at Sam’s lower lip.

“Want you so fucking bad,” he growls between nips. “Want to feel you. I’ve wanted to for months and I haven’t done _anything_ , so don’t you fucking say I’m not ready.”

He’s gone as suddenly as he was there, striding down the hall with his shoulders squared and his hands curling and uncurling by his sides. Sam leans against the wall, breathless and hard enough that sitting in the car is going to be painful.

Dean can’t be serious about this. He _can’t_. Not that Sam doesn’t want to have sex, of course, but … God, this could take them back to square one if it backfires and Sam isn’t sure he could take that.

 **::Trust him,::** the cougar advises.

“You’re just horny,” Sam mutters.

The cougar doesn’t bother trying to deny it. **::Yes,::** it says, **::But I also trust our mate. This is his choice.::**

Sam digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “If he says stop, you’re gonna have to help me because I don’t think I’ll be able to on my own.”

 **::You won’t have to,::** the cougar tells him. Its non-existent tail twitches in excitement.

“I hope not,” Sam sighs, and follows his brother’s lingering scent down the hall.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam spends the rest of the day caught on the edge between excited and so nervous he could puke. Dean keeps shooting him these _looks_ as they pick up the herbs they need to get rid of the poltergeist, warm and private, and Sam flushes from his head to his toes. Then someone bumps Dean’s shoulder as they pass him and Dean goes white and still and Sam’s hard on wilts under his concern.

As they take care of the house—shoving sachets in the walls: dodging objects hurled at them with ease—Sam rethinks his position on the whole sex thing. Dean gives him this knowing look when they finish and says, “You’re trying to pussy out.”

Sam sighs as he brushes flecks of plaster off his jacket. “You aren’t ready.”

“That’s my decision.”

“Dean, you—you haven’t improved at _all_ with people.”

Dean meets his gaze head on, unflinching. “Cause I haven’t been trying,” he says.

Sam frowns. “You what?”

“I made a decision. I could have tried to shove through all this shit in one go, or I could pick one thing to work on at a time. I wanted you, so I’ve, uh, been working on that. Figured the rest would be easier if I could lean on you a little.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “You know. Like you said you wanted me to.”

The idea that Dean might be able to compartmentalize the healing process never even occurred to Sam. He stares at his brother for a moment, floored, and Dean shifts underneath his gaze. In a few moments, his embarrassment is going to turn to annoyance at the scrutiny, but Sam can’t help himself.

 **::See? Deanmate is smart. He knows what he is doing.::**

The start of a scowl is forming on Dean’s mouth, and Sam puts a stop to that by tipping forward and kissing him. Dean makes a soft, surprised noise but recovers quickly, grabbing Sam’s hair and crushing their mouths together. He’s even greedier than he was earlier today, thrusting his tongue as far as he can into Sam’s mouth, licking along the ridges of the roof and then sliding against Sam’s tongue with suggestive, hungry movements. His body rocks forward and Sam feels the brief press of his brother, hard and ready, before Dean edges back and breaks free from the kiss.

“Car. Now,” he says.

Sam is moving before the words die on the air.


	36. This Is How We Fit

It hits him low and warm in the stomach as they walk in the motel room door. They’re going to have sex. Dean’s going to fuck him.

Sam hasn’t actually been on the receiving end before, but he isn’t nervous. It’s Dean, and Dean is going to make it feel fucking awesome. Sam’s already more than happy with the way his brother’s dick fills his mouth—he isn’t as long as Sam but he’s thicker, and heavier—and he’s pretty sure that the curve to Dean will be just right to hit that sparking place inside.

Across the room, Dean starts to take off his coat and, on impulse, Sam shoots forward and covers his brother’s hands with his own. Dean glances at him, startled, and then snorts with amusement as Sam slides his jacket off for him.

“Let me,” Sam murmurs, pressing a kiss to the nape of Dean’s neck.

Dean leans back into him, languid and easy. When Sam slides his hands underneath his brother’s shirt and bites down on the tender skin that he just kissed, Dean’s back arches and he makes a low sound that’s half-growl and half-moan. Sam sucks on the piece of skin in his mouth while running his hands across his brother’s stomach, slowly pushing Dean’s shirt up until his fingers are rubbing across his nipples.

“Fucking tease,” Dean groans, but he doesn’t make any move to get away, and Sam can smell his arousal thick on the air.

Sam scrapes over one erect nipple with his fingernail and then forces himself to release his brother’s neck, giving the reddened skin a soothing swipe of his tongue as he lifts his head again. “Mine,” he whispers.

“Possessive much?” Dean asks, the words half-smothered by the cloth of his shirt as Sam finally pulls it over his head.

Once it’s free, Sam drops it on the floor and nuzzles the slowly forming bruise. “Let it stay,” he whispers, and Dean shudders. “I want to see it. I want to be able to touch it in the car, want you to feel it …”

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Dean blurts, and then he spins in Sam’s arms and tugs at his jacket. “Get naked. Now, damn it.”

“I will if you stop getting in the way,” Sam tells him, slapping Dean’s interfering hands away and working the buttons on his shirt himself. The cougar takes over for a few seconds, slowing their hands, teasing, and Dean makes a frustrated noise.

“Oh, for the love of—” He grabs Sam’s shirt and pulls, sending buttons popping.

The cougar snorts amusement and Sam gives it a mental shove while Dean manhandles him out of the rag that used to be his best shirt.

 _Thanks a lot._

 **::You can get a new skin,::** it reminds him, and then uses his mouth to nip at Dean’s ear.

Dean rolls his head, dislodging Sam and nudging him to one side, and then latches onto the vulnerable skin of his throat just under his jaw. Sam groans and the cougar’s satisfied purr fills him.

 _Could you—please—shut up?_

He half expects the cougar to be offended, but it just tumbles against his insides playfully and recedes a little, letting him concentrate on the fact that Dean has his jeans undone and is trying to push them down. Sam shuffles back a step and works them off himself before Dean gets frustrated enough to ruin his entire outfit.

When he’s naked, he looks back up to find his brother barefoot and opening his own jeans, eyes fastened on Sam. “You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” Dean says as Sam closes the distance between them again. He lets Dean unzip his own pants, taking the opportunity to trace across the freckles on Dean’s chest with his tongue.

“Gimme a fucking second,” Dean grunts, struggling awkwardly to get his pants and boxers off while keeping his torso still. “I can’t think straight when you do that.”

 _That makes two of us,_ Sam thinks, but he makes himself behave long enough for Dean to hop on one leg and then the other and then they’re both naked and hard and Dean is pressed up against him again.

“Okay,” Dean pants. “Go ahead.”

Sam obediently bends his neck, arrowing in on his spot—his constellation—and working the flesh with his lips and tongue and teeth. Dean threads his fingers in Sam’s hair, clutching, and hisses. His dick bumps Sam’s leg and Sam moans around the flesh in his mouth at the sudden, very vivid image of that hot, soft flesh plunging into him.

“I sent—Jesus _fuck_ —I sent the furrball away,” Dean says, sliding one hand from Sam’s head down to his shoulder blade. “Want—just us right now, okay?”

Sam doesn’t even have to ask. The cougar obediently shifts further away, taking itself as far as it can go with one last, parting thought. **::Good mating.::**

He forces his head up from Dean’s skin to tell him that they’re as alone as they’re ever going to get and gets distracted by his brother’s lips. He kisses Dean as firmly as Dean kissed him earlier, walking them both backward toward the bed.

“Alone,” he finally manages during a pause they both take to breathe, and Dean licks into his mouth around the word, devouring it.

“Good,” he pants back, dropping his hands lower and gripping Sam’s cock. “Now get your ass in the bed.” But he’s working Sam’s cock now with those slow, teasing strokes that he knows drive Sam crazy, and if he thinks Sam can do anything but pant when he does that, then he’s fucking insane.

Then Dean edges forward, biting along Sam’s collarbone, and the last fragments of coherent thought go out the window. Sam clings to his brother, digging his fingers into Dean’s skin—smooth beneath his left hand, roughened thickness of the burn scar beneath his right—and makes choked noises that only seem to encourage his brother.

 _Gonna,_ he thinks. _Fuck, gonna—_

He tries to utter a warning, but the best he can manage is “Ung,” and then he’s coming, spilling sudden and hot. Dean lifts his head immediately, looking down at Sam’s cock as it twitches out the last bit of his orgasm with lust-fogged confusion on his face. Sam is still drifting in the warm laziness of a successful climax when his brother’s expression shifts to annoyance.

“Oh, give me a break,” Dean mutters.

Sam hums softly and bumps their heads together. “Still gonna put out,” he mumbles, going for Dean’s mouth. Dean kisses him back for a second and then breaks free.

“Yeah, you are,” he says, and shoves Sam backwards onto the bed. Sam lays there, comfortably lethargic, while Dean crawls on top of him. His brother is holding his come-covered hand carefully off the sheets, and as he straddles Sam’s stomach, he offers him a slow smirk and starts to lick his fingers.

Oh, fuck that isn’t fair.

“Shit,” Sam mutters faintly as his half-hard cock makes a valiant attempt to come again.

Dean licks until his hand is clean and then shifts back until he’s sitting on Sam’s ankles. Sam has caught his breath a little by now, and he lifts himself up on his elbows. Dean is leaning forward, and Sam can’t help but twitch nervously.

“Don’t you need lube?” he asks.

Dean ignores the question and closes his mouth around Sam’s spent cock. Swearing, Sam bucks up hard enough that Dean has to clamp his hands on Sam’s hips to force him back down. His tongue slides easily around Sam as he sucks, insistent and intent. It hurts, too much on orgasm-sensitive flesh, but at the same time it feels great, and in the end Sam just drops his head back against the pillows and lets his brother work.

Dean breaks out every trick he knows, alternating between cock and balls until Sam is hard and needy again. His hands are probably leaving bruises holding Sam’s hips still against the bed, but Sam can’t stop himself from trying to buck up into the teasing suckling and licks.

“Stop—shit—stop fucking around!” he growls, and Dean pulls off.

He _pulls off_ , the bastard, and gives Sam a lopsided grin while tracing two fingers across the red, throbbing skin of Sam’s erection.

“Try and keep it up this time, Sammy,” he says, and then jumps off of Sam with an easy grace, like he isn’t sporting a painful-looking erection himself.

Sam blinks at the ceiling while Dean scrounges around in their things. He’s trying to scrape together enough brain cells to figure out why he would need to keep it up. It isn’t like he has to have an erection for Dean to—

Oh. Oh fuck.

Dean reappears with a tube of KY in one hand and climbs back on top of him. “I picked up a few different kinds,” he announces, “But I think we’re gonna stick with Old Faithful for now. We can play with the other ones later.” His grin is as easy as ever, but Sam can catch the sour edge of nervousness around the edges of his brother’s scent.

“Dean, I can’t—I thought you were gonna—”

Dean isn’t looking at him—is concentrating on uncapping the tube in his hands—but Sam can tell he’s paying attention. “Gonna what?” he asks with feigned lightness.

Sam flushes, trying very hard to be virtuous while his dick is proclaiming just how happy it is with this turn of events, and then makes himself say, “You said you wanted to fuck me.”

“Hate to break it to you, Sammy, but this is fucking.” The top of the tube finally pops off and Dean tenses a little more. God, he isn’t ready. He’s so far from ready it isn’t funny.

“You know what I mean,” Sam says, but he still isn’t making any attempt to get away. He’s letting Dean grab his right hand and squeeze a generous amount of lube onto his fingers. The KY is cold, a minor shock, and slicker than he remembers from his experiments in college.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Dean says—as much to reassure himself as to calm Sam, Sam thinks. Putting the tube down on the bed next to them, he swings a leg over Sam so that he’s straddling his stomach again. “Come on, do it.”

“Dean,” Sam says weakly, but it isn’t quite a protest. He lets Dean bring his hand around to his entrance. Brushes one slicked finger along the crease in his brother’s ass of his own accord and feels Dean jump a little. Dean catches himself almost immediately and clenches his jaw. Stubborn.

Sam’s breath catches as his brother reaches back and spreads himself open with one hand while tightening his grip on Sam’s wrist with the other. Sam’s fingertips brush against Dean’s opening and he can’t quite catch the moan that slips out from his lips.

“You sure?” he breathes, rubbing his index finger around the soft indentation.

“If you make me say it one more time, I swear to God I will cut you off for a month,” Dean says. Then, before Sam knows what’s happening, he forces Sam’s hand higher and breaches himself on his finger.

Dean’s hand immediately loosens on his wrist. He drops his head forward and squeezes his eyes shut in concentration. His chest is heaving: sweat shining over the bite marks that Sam left on the ginkgo-shaped patch of freckles. Sam keeps his finger very, very still and tries to ignore his dick’s frantic signals to get on with it already.

They stay there in frozen silence for almost two entire minutes, and then Dean’s body finally begins to relax. His erection has shrunk noticeably, but Sam takes comfort in the fact that his brother isn’t actually limp.

“You want me to stop?” he asks.

“No,” Dean says. “No, just—go slow, okay?”

Sam nods, thinking that it’s a good thing Dean already got him off once. Otherwise, as long as it’s going to take to prep his brother, he probably would have shot off before he got more than two fingers inside of him.

Carefully, he pushes his finger deeper. When his first knuckle slips inside, Dean makes a low noise and drops forward to lean on his hands. Sam instantly stops to wait.

The pause is shorter this time, and it’s only about a minute before Dean gives him a little nod. Sam pushes forward on a slow, even motion that bottoms out at the base of his finger.

“Jesus,” Dean hisses, biting his lower lip. Then Sam folds his finger, angling down, and Dean’s entire body jumps. “ _Jesus_ ,” he says louder, and in a completely different tone.

Swallowing, Sam rubs against the small spot with tiny circles. He can feel the shocks shooting through his brother’s body, and he can certainly see the effect on his brother’s cock. He works Dean until he’s fully erect again and then eases off.

“Gonna open you up now, okay?” he says.

Dean’s eyes are still squeezed shut, but he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, do it.”

Sam works with his index finger alone for a few minutes, moving it in and out until the slide is easy and frictionless. Then he removes it completely to relube, slicking his middle finger with fresh KY as well.

“Two,” he warns, positioning his fingers at his brother’s entrance.

As Sam pushes forward, Dean makes a broken noise and shifts his legs wider. His erection starts to wilt again and Sam grabs his cock with his free hand. When he jacks it, Dean bucks forward involuntarily. The backward slide of his thrust accidentally slots Sam’s fingers deep and Dean lets out a choked cry.

“Shit,” Sam swears. He shifts his hand from his brother’s cock to his side. “You okay? Dean? You with me?”

“F-forgot,” Dean manages, trembling.

“Forgot what?” Sam asks because otherwise he’ll have to ask if Dean wants him to stop and he doesn’t think he can at this point. Dean feels too tight and warm around his fingers.

“How it feels,” Dean says, and makes another short buck, fucking himself back on Sam’s fingers. The bottom drops out of Sam’s stomach and his dick gives a greedy twitch.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” he breathes.

“More,” Dean groans, rocking with slow, steady motions. “I can—more—”

“Okay, just—fuck, just let me—” Sam pulls his fingers free gently—has to bite his lip to stop himself from coming at the disappointed noise Dean makes when he does—and then squeezes more slick onto his fingers.

When he pushes in this time, his brother’s body takes him only reluctantly, and Dean’s breathing goes ragged. “Wait,” he groans, twisting his body. “Wait, _fuck_ —”

Sam pauses but doesn’t pull the tips of his fingers out. No matter how carefully he does this, at some point Dean’s muscles are going to complain. “It’s gonna hurt a little,” he says. “I can go back to two, try and open you up a little more, but it’s still going to burn.”

“S’not that, it—just—flashback—I’m okay.” He lets out a shuddering breath and repeats, more firmly, “I’m okay.”

“It’s just me, Dean,” Sam says, and strokes his brother’s side. “Use your nose, okay? And open your eyes so you can see me.”

Dean slowly opens his eyes, lime green with the wolf’s withdrawal and slightly dazed. “It, uh, helps to hear you,” he says, carefully pushing back and taking Sam’s fingers deeper.

“Okay,” Sam says, and starts up a slow, repetitive litany of ‘beautiful’, and ‘love you’, and ‘Dean,’ while he opens his brother up. It takes almost five minutes, but Dean finally relaxes again and starts rocking himself back and forth on Sam’s fingers with breathy, punched exhales.

“You want four?” Sam asks when he’s sliding fast and easy.

“Do I—do I need it?” Dean asks.

The implicit trust in that question sends an overwhelming wave of warmth through Sam. As vulnerable and broken as his brother is right now, he trusts Sam to know what he needs, to make this good for him, to take care of him. Sam has to still Dean's movements with his free hand until the pressure in his chest eases and he can think straight again.

Then he says, “It’s gonna burn either way. My fingers aren’t long enough to open you up completely.”

“If you weren’t such a goddamned yeti, that wouldn’t be a problem,” Dean pants and tosses his head, flecking Sam with droplets of sweat. “Okay, let’s just—get it over with.”

And just like that, all of the raging need that Sam has been building up damps down, like a fire Dean has tossed a bucket of sand on.

“If that’s all it’s gonna be, we’re not doing it at all,” he says. “This is—Dean, this is a lot already. We don’t have to do anymore tonight. I can get you off like this.” He twists his fingers and draws a sharp breath from his brother.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Dean snaps, hitching his hips up and pulling free from Sam’s fingers. “I want to do this. I just—getting there is gonna be a bitch.”

“I know,” Sam says, running his hand along Dean’s side reassuringly. “That’s why I’m telling you we can wait. Do this part until you’re comfortable, and then, maybe—”

Dean shuts him up by kissing him, which is just as effective as his punches used to be and a hell of a lot pleasanter. Sam can taste his brother’s desire on his lips and his interest in the proceedings rekindles. He’s struck by a sudden yearning to see what his fingers have done to Dean’s ass: wants to see his brother open and ready and shiny with lube. Arousal builds in him, strong and honey-thick, and he breaks the kiss.

“We don’t do this right now and we won’t be able to do it at all,” he warns.

Dean laughs at him: part nerves, part genuine amusement. “We’re gonna have to work on your stamina, Sammy.”

“It’s not my fault you drive me nuts,” Sam mutters, stealing another quick kiss before leaning up on one elbow and reaching for the lube again.

Dean beats him to it, upending the tube and squeezing the rest out into his palm. Then, crawling backwards into position, he grips Sam’s cock and starts slathering it with lube. Sam snaps his head back into the pillow and digs his nails into his own thigh. Dean laughs at him again.

“Gonna have to get you a cock ring, man.”

Sam’s too busy not coming to answer.

Dean takes pity on him and releases Sam once he’s done coating his cock, giving him a chance to catch his breath. Then, sitting back on his heels, he asks, “You gonna shoot before we get started?”

“Oh, fuck you, Dean,” Sam grumbles.

Dean gives him a smirk that falters as he lifts up over Sam’s cock. Serious now, he meets Sam’s eyes and says, “You’ve gotta let me drive, okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He puts one hand on his own thigh, ready to dig his fingers in if he needs to bring himself back from the edge in one way or another, and puts the other—fingers still lube-slick—on Dean’s hip.

Dean grips his cock, starts to adjust it upward and loses his grip. Sam would laugh but he’s too involved with how intent Dean is, lips pursed into a frown and eyes narrowed. Determination in every clench of his muscles. Gripping Sam again, more firmly this time, Dean aligns them and then searches out Sam’s eyes.

“I love you,” Sam breathes.

Dean doesn’t say anything, but the way he lowers himself down is answer enough.

Panic flutters in his eyes as Sam breaches him, and the _wethotperfectslide_ of him constricts nervously. Sam can’t force words past the tightness of his throat, but Dean makes himself relax on his own after a few seconds and lowers himself further. It’s a smooth, tight fit about halfway down and then Sam feels the pressure of unopened, deeper regions. Dean’s thighs are trembling, and his inner walls are jerking wildly against Sam’s cock.

“We can stop,” Sam grunts. He’s thinking of nominating himself for sainthood for just managing to suggest it.

Dean shoots him a scornful glance and then shoves down in one long slide. Sam digs his nails into his own thigh hard enough to draw blood and somehow, miraculously, manages not to come.

Dean is flush on top of him, balls resting on Sam’s stomach and cock only slightly softened by the shock of penetration. Every muscle in his body is taut, and his head is thrown back, exposing the long, vulnerable line of his throat. Rivulets of sweat snake down the skin there and onto his chest: one drop beads on the nub of his nipple. Sam slides his hand from his brother’s hip to his lower stomach, splaying his fingers. He’s half-stunned by the fact that, somewhere back behind his hand, he’s inside of Dean.

After a few minutes of blissful, strained silence, Sam croaks, “You okay?”

Dean drops his head down again and licks his lips. It takes him a second or so to find Sam’s eyes with his own. “Should’ve laced your milk with coffee,” he says weakly. “Stunted your growth.”

“If I’m too big—” Sam fumbles, self-conscious.

Dean’s smile is sudden and shockingly tender. “Hey, man,” he says, finding Sam’s cheek with one hand and stroking. “I fucking love your cock. Just gonna take a little getting used to.”

And Sam realizes that Dean’s eyes are thick with lust and a little pain, but they’re clear. Dean is here with him, and he isn’t freaking out.

“You’re okay,” he breathes.

“Be better when we get this show on the road,” Dean grunts, starting to shift himself up again. “Christ, you’re huge.”

This time Sam utters a breathy laugh at the grumble, holding himself still as his brother works himself open with slow, shallow movements. Dean grins back and then grimaces as his body moves a little too fast. Closing his eyes, he concentrates on what he’s doing again, and after a few seconds Sam is clinging to the bedspread to keep from thrusting up and getting this show on the road himself before Dean's ready for it.

The drag of Dean’s tight channel against his cock is so fucking _perfect_. He’s just as tight as he was in the dream, and even hotter. And he can _smell_ Dean now: loam and almonds wreathing him as Dean pumps up and down above him.

As Dean loosens, he speeds his rhythm until he’s riding Sam with quick, hard movements. He braces himself on Sam’s chest, palm over his heart and fingers curling into his skin, and rocks back and forth. Sweat is dripping off of him everywhere, and his skin is flushed.

Dean rolls his hips, working Sam’s cock deeper, and choked off cries and moans stutter from his lips. Neither one of them is talking any more: Sam can’t pull together enough to manage a single ‘Dean’ or ‘yes’. Too much of his concentration is focused on not thrusting up the way he wants to for him to do anything other than pant and moan.

Dean switches hands on Sam’s chest suddenly, bringing his right down to work at his cock. When Sam realizes what his brother is after, he shoves Dean’s hand to one side, grateful to finally have something to do: something else to focus on aside from the soft slick around his own cock.

It only takes a few clumsy, rough strokes and Dean comes with not just a moan or a cry but an actual, full-throated shout. He keeps fucking down on Sam as his dick spurts, splattering Sam’s stomach and chest. Sam wants to follow him over, but he’s been fighting off his orgasm for so long now that he doesn’t remember how to let go. He’s still hard and hungry when Dean finally slumps, dropping forward onto Sam’s chest and smearing his own come between them and pulling Sam into a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss.

Sam kisses his brother back because he can’t _not_ , and after a moment, the _godpleaseletmecomealready_ signals that his balls are sending ease. Dean’s muscles are still fluttering around him, but the stimulation feels good again instead of half-painful the way it was for a few seconds there.

Then Dean lifts his head, giving his hips a roll that threatens to white Sam out, and pants, “Okay, come on and fuck me already.”

It takes Sam a couple of tries to get his voice working well enough to ask, “Are you—Dean, are you sure?”

“I don’t need a white knight, Sam,” Dean answers, and licks along Sam’s jaw.

Sam doesn’t ask again. He moves, using his strength to flip them, and braces himself on his left elbow. Dean lets his legs fall open and Sam slides more firmly against him. “Gonna fuck you,” he growls in his brother’s ear.

Dean grips his shoulder loosely, body lax and open in the wake of his own orgasm, and then grunts as Sam thrusts. It’s dirty and hard and hungry, their chests sliding together and slicked with Dean’s come and both of their sweat, and Sam has been hard so long and so violently that his dick aches with it. He thrusts and devours his brother’s mouth and Dean arches up into him.

After a few minutes, one of Dean’s legs hooks around his waist, and Sam can tell from Dean’s groans that the new angle is sliding Sam past his prostate just right. He pulls out part way, making shallow little hitches of his hips, and Dean babbles, “Oh God,” into his mouth. Sam keeps pounding into that sweet spot until Dean is hard again—turn about is fair play—and then slots back in and goes back to trying to fuck his brother through the mattress.

When he feels himself approaching the cusp of orgasm— _fucking finally_ —Sam shoves a hand between them and grabs Dean’s cock. They go over so closely together that Sam can’t tell whether he’s coming because Dean’s ass has suddenly become a clutching, hungry vise or if Dean is coming because of the hot flood of Sam’s release inside of him. Sam keeps kissing his brother through it: violent at first and then, as they both come down, softening into something tender and almost reverent.

“Ngh,” Dean groans, letting his leg drop back onto the bed. In turn, Sam carefully edges himself out. His softening cock comes free easily, but Dean hisses anyway, and his cock manages one last, weak trickle.

Sam inches a little to one side and then drapes himself across Dean’s body again, laying his forehead against his brother’s ear and kissing the top of his shoulder.

“I take it back,” Dean mumbles. “No cock ring for you.”

“You,” Sam pants. “You were—that was—”

“Told you I was ready.” The words come out in a sleepy slur, and Sam can’t really blame him. He’s pretty exhausted himself.

Somehow, he still manages to scrounge up enough energy to rub his nose against his brother’s cheek as he whispers, “I love you.”

“Definitely not the girl in this relationship,” comes Dean’s drowsy response.

Sam falls asleep smiling.


	37. Epilogue

It’s been almost two years since Bobby got himself mauled by a black dog with more guts than sense—damned thing kept coming even after he put a few sanctified rounds in its skull—but his leg still aches in damp weather. It’s one of those wounds that’ll stay with him until something finally gets the best of him. Like the knife he caught in the shoulder that’s been warning him of lightning storms since he was thirty, or the round he took in his left hip in the war that makes his whole leg ache if he tries running more than a few minutes at a time.

Or what happened with John Winchester’s boys.

Yeah, Bobby fucked the pooch pretty good on that one. Should have shoved them both in a room and locked the door when Dean first came to him with that goddamned plan of his. Kept them in there until they actually talked to each other.

Should have kept a closer watch on Dean, not let him go running off all over the country with no one to watch his back like he was invincible … or had a death wish.

Should have seen the dangerous, single-mindedness of Sam. Should have known where that kind of thinking would lead.

Should damned well have told John to socialize his boys better when they were young so they didn’t grow up like two sides of a badly bent coin.

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” Bobby mutters, and sips on his beer.

He’s about three hours away from Harvelle’s—could get there tonight if he wanted, but he’s happier putting it off until tomorrow. The meeting will still be going on then: all those alpha males in one room competing to see who can shout the loudest and who has the biggest gun. Hell, he could probably stay in town another couple of nights before they actually get down to discussing the portents and signs they’re meeting to talk about.

Water turned to blood down in Alachua, Florida: not just a font or someone’s well but an entire, five mile long stretch of lake.

Rain of toads in Dalark, Arkansas: weathermen are still trying to find a tornado to blame that one on.

Locusts covering the town of Westing, Idaho: from gutter to rooftop for two weeks straight.

And in Willow Grove, Delaware last week, sheets of fire fell from a clear sky for over thirty minutes.

If there’s a hunter in the States that doesn’t think the end is coming, and coming _fast_ , then they’re either dumber than a sack of bricks or six feet under.

Bobby moves his beer around moodily on the table’s worn surface. If Dean and Sam were still around—around and still functioning, that is—Bobby knows who he’d want taking charge at that meeting. As it is, some hunter with delusions of grandeur and a fast draw is going to end up top dog. Bobby himself is too banged up and long in the tooth to be considered seriously for the job, and truth be told he doesn’t want it.

All he’s wanted for the last five years is not to hear any more about the Winchesters.

It’s never ‘Sam and Dean’ or ‘John’s boys’ in the stories he hears. No, it’s always ‘the Winchesters’, spoken in a hushed whisper hovering somewhere between petrified and reverent. If the speaker is feeling particularly bold, he’ll throw a ‘damned’ in between the ‘the’ and the boys’ surname, which Bobby thinks is fairly accurate.

John Winchester’s boys, boys Bobby helped raise, boys he thinks of as his own sons, and hunters are using them like ghost stories to scare one another.

“Some fucking world,” he grunts, and swipes a thumb through the condensation on his glass.

It’s difficult to tell truth from myth in the stories they tell. Bobby’s seen the glowing yellow eyes for himself, so he knows that part is true. Do they really move faster than the human eye can follow, though? It’s possible; lord knows he’s seen stranger things. Did Sam really cut off a man’s hand for touching Dean? Bobby wants to say no, but isn’t sure he can. Sam was awfully protective of Dean before, and now it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do. The one thing he knows he can rule out is the bit about them eating demons. That’s just plain crazy talk.

Someone leans on the counter next to him, a little too close for comfort, and Bobby edges his stool over with an annoyed grimace. This shit hole of a bar isn’t crowded enough for anyone to have to come that near. It jangles his nerves up, having a stranger inside his guard like this. He has half a mind to tell the guy off, except that he can tell without looking up that he’s tall, and built. Spoiling for a fight, too, the way he elbowed in. Bobby could probably take him if he had to, but these days it’s just easier to take the low road.

Fuck, he must be getting old.

“Three whiskeys,” the guy says, slapping a bill down on the counter.

Bobby stiffens. It can’t be. Imfuckingpossible.

But he looks up, and up, and up, at Sam Winchester’s angular profile.

“Hey, Bobby,” Sam says without looking at him.

“Sam,” Bobby says, trying to keep his voice flat as possible while he reaches for his gun.

Without glancing at Bobby, Sam shakes his head slightly. “You don’t want to do that.”

Bobby freezes and Sam’s lips quirk up. The bartender comes back then, gazing at Sam with badly concealed fascination, although he’s just standing there and his eyes are as hazel as ever. But there’s something: some kind of draw. Something about Sam that puts Bobby in mind of all those daydreams he had about owning a pet dragon when he was a kid.

“Thanks,” Sam says, flashing that dimpled grin that makes him look all of twelve years old. He hasn’t aged a day, Bobby realizes. Five years and he looks exactly the same as he did when Bobby saw him walk out of the Bellagio’s presidential suite.

The bartender melts a little, and Bobby can see the intent to offer Sam her number light in her eyes. But Sam tilts his head then, and the draw changes—goes cold—and all Bobby gets from Sam now is an aura that radiates danger: that screams _feral_ and _predator_. The bartender flushes and flees to the far end, not even waiting to pick up the five-dollar tip Sam is dropping on the stained wood.

“Thanks for taking care of the Impala,” Sam says, hooking his fingers around the three glasses. He doesn’t appear to have noticed the bartender’s swift departure: or maybe he’s just accustomed to that kind of thing.

“I like cars,” Bobby says, stupid with nerves, and then Sam turns toward him and he can’t breathe.

Sam’s eyes are as hazel as ever, but they don’t need to be gold for Bobby to see that Sam isn’t the only thing looking out at him. There’s too much knowledge there: ancient eyes in a young, familiar face. Sam isn’t smiling, but he isn’t frowning either. Neutral. Aloof.

And Bobby knows what type of animal Sam has riding around in there, if not the exact breed.

“Have a drink with us.”

It’s not a request.

Bobby is halfway to the shadow-shrouded corner table Sam pointed him toward when he realizes that Sam said ‘us’, and of course he isn’t alone. His pulse picks up because he loves Sam, he does, but Dean has always struck him as vulnerable in strange ways, and so has been dearer. There’s always been something about John’s eldest, right from the first moment the man showed up on Bobby’s doorstep with two kids in tow. An unflinching goodness that made Bobby want to shove the boy in a box in an attempt to keep him forever untarnished and bright.

He sees Dean’s eyes first, glinting at him from the shadows: reflecting light like any nocturnal animal’s would. Then his own vision adjusts to the gloom.

Looking at John’s eldest is much like what Bobby imagines standing in the center of a tornado and looking up must be. He feels buffeted on all sides: the hunter in him repelled by what he knows lurks behind that angelic face, the man in him drawn by the same allure he saw at work with Sam. By his own paternal fondness for the boy. The pull is stronger in Dean, maybe because Dean is so obviously unaware of it, and Bobby has to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and touching.

Sam is holding three drinks at present, but he’d drop all of them in a heartbeat if he thought Dean was being threatened. Bobby likes all of his limbs right where they are, thanks.

“Hey, Bobby,” Dean says. He smiles, shyly, and Bobby feels gut shot. He can see, now, why some stranger might want to touch regardless of the looming threat Sam presents. Can see why Sam might feel he has to protect Dean from covetous eyes: be a little fast on the draw.

“Dean,” Bobby rasps, and then goes still as Dean gets up and comes around the table toward him. Sam is a furnace at Bobby’s back, making his neck crawl and his fingers twitch for his gun, and Bobby is suddenly certain that they brought him over here to kill him. But Dean only throws his arms around Bobby and hauls him into a hug tight enough to make his ribs creak in protest.

Before Bobby can even begin to wince, Dean has released him and is stepping back at arms length. “Sorry,” he grins. “I’m not used to touching humans.”

Touching _humans_. Jesus.

Bobby tries to work up some spit in his bone-dry mouth and can’t manage enough to slick a stamp. Then Sam bumps his arm with one elbow. “Sit down.”

Bobby casts a quick, startled look back and up at him. When he catches sight of the three drinks in Sam’s hand, his stomach settles a bit. If they want to water him, they probably aren’t gonna cut him open and spill it right out again. They almost certainly only want to talk. He’s pretty sure.

Carefully, Bobby edges into the chair closest to the door. John’s boys head around to the other side of the table. Their arms brush as they move, and Dean takes two of the drinks from his brother without a hitch in either of their gaits. When they sit, it’s with one movement.

Bobby wishes, suddenly and insanely, that he could see them hunt.

“Your leg bothering you?” Dean asks abruptly.

Bobby frowns at him, trying to figure out how the hell Dean noticed when Bobby _knows_ , sure as he knows from the ache in his bones that it’ll rain tonight, that he wasn’t limping. Not even a bit. He didn’t want to give them any signs of weakness.

Only somehow he had.

Dean is still waiting for an answer, so Bobby clears his throat and grunts, “Black dog.”

Wincing, Dean slides one of the glasses across the table. “They can be nasty. Sam and I ran into a pack about a month ago—outside Boulder, wasn’t it, Sam?”

Sam toys with his drink and stares at Bobby and doesn’t say anything.

Dean’s shoulders jerk and Sam grunts, eyes narrowing briefly. If Bobby didn’t know better, he’d say Dean just kicked his brother under the table.

“Boulder was hellhounds,” Sam says now.

“Yeah, right. Hellhounds.” Dean drums his fingers against the wood, smile going strained. “So, uh, how you been, Bobby?”

Bobby stares at him. Dean doesn’t actually think they’re going to have share time here, does he? Jesus Christ, Bobby should be running for his life, or shooting, or—or something.

“What do you want?” he asks hoarsely.

Dean’s smile slips and Sam edges closer to his brother, dropping a hand on the back of Dean’s neck. Bobby can see Sam’s thumb moving, rubbing, and his stomach gives a little flip that deepens into a pit when Dean doesn’t pull away from the … caress, nothing else to call it. Then Sam turns his head and nuzzles at Dean’s neck, eyes angled toward Bobby and glinting yellow.

“Come on, baby. Told you he wasn’t gonna listen.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Stop being an asshole,” he grumbles, shoving Sam away a little. But only annoyed, not disgusted. Like he’s used to this kind of thing.

“You said you weren’t gonna touch him.” It’s suicide, but Bobby can’t keep it in. He’s—God, he’s tried not to think about Sam’s confession over the years—tried not to _wonder_ —and here it is shoved in his face. Deliberately, from Sam’s satisfied smirk.

Boy’s still holding grudges after all this time.

“Things change,” Sam says flatly, and Dean barks, “Sam!”

Sam hunches a little, scowling at the table.

“Go get me another drink,” Dean says.

“You haven’t even touched that one,” Sam mutters, rebellious as always.

Dean gives his brother a cool look and tosses the whiskey back in one, long draw. When he tilts his head back, Bobby can’t help but notice the purpling bruise just underneath his jaw where someone _(Sam)_ got a little carried away. Dean slams the empty glass back on the table and Bobby jumps. The look Sam shoots him as he gets up to head for the bar is part dark amusement, part warning.

“Sorry about that,” Dean apologizes, fiddling with his empty glass. “He’s been on edge since Houston.”

What Bobby wants to do is demand what the hell Dean is thinking, letting Sam touch him like that. He hasn’t quite finished working through his shock, though, and what comes out past his numb lips is, “What happened in Houston?”

Dean shrugs with studied nonchalance. “Ran into a coupla demons. They said some stuff Sam didn’t care for, but we took care of them.”

Bobby glances over his shoulder and sees that the bartender is taking her time getting around to taking Sam’s order. Still spooked from before, probably. When he looks back at Dean, he tries like hell to see the berserker, the danger, but all he can see is John Winchester’s son, too brightly burning for his own good, staring down at his empty glass with an awkward slump to his shoulders.

Without letting himself think it through, he leans across the table and grabs Dean’s hand.

Dean jerks, startled, but doesn’t pull away. “Bobby, what the hell, man?”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Bobby says urgently. “If Sam’s—if he’s hurting you, if he’s—I can clear out your room, and you can—”

Dean’s eyes go even wider, more alarmed, and when Bobby registers the prick at his throat he understands why.

“You want to let him go real slow,” Sam drawls, and drags the blade up higher beneath Bobby’s chin. Bobby opens his hand obediently and doesn’t move. Doesn’t even dare to breathe.

“He wasn’t trying to kill me, dumb ass,” Dean snaps.

The pressure on Bobby’s throat doesn’t waver. “We’re going. Now.”

“Go wait in the car, Sam,” Dean orders, mouth tightening.

Now Bobby knows how the bone feels when two junkyard dogs start snarling at each other over who gets to take the first bite. Jesus, why the hell didn’t he try running when he had the chance?

“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“You really want to have this argument again?” Dean demands. “Cause you know we’ll win. You’re outnumbered three to one here, Sammy. So put the damned knife away before you start another brawl and go cool off.”

After a moment where Bobby’s sure he’s about to choke on his own blood, the prickle of steel against his throat eases off. Sam comes back into view, scowling and adjusting his right sleeve where the knife he was just using is safely hidden again.

“I’ll shut up, but I’m staying,” he says, eyes fixed on Bobby.

“Whatever,” Dean mutters, and then turns back to Bobby himself. “Look, I’m fine. Sam isn’t doing anything I don’t want. Swear to God.”

That shouldn’t make the queasiness in Bobby’s stomach settle, but it does anyway. He’s still sweating from his close call with Sam, but he’s had near misses plenty of times before and he’s used to them by now.

“Okay,” he says, and somehow means it.

“We aren’t dangerous,” Dean continues, and Bobby can’t smother a cynical laugh as he brushes one hand against his throat.

“Told you,” Sam mutters, and Dean tosses him a look.

“Yeah, cause you just pulled a fucking knife on him.”

“Oh, like he wasn’t already staring at us like we’re monsters! Open your eyes, Dean. He didn’t believe it coming from Tyr’s Bible, he sure as hell isn’t gonna believe it coming from us.”

“Try me,” Bobby says, surprising himself.

When the boys turn to look at him, there’s a soft, golden cast to both of their gazes. Dean purses his lips, annoyed, while Sam offers Bobby a humorless smile.

“Okay,” Sam says. “We’re not insane. We’re not going insane. Dean and I—we’re what berserkers were meant to be, back when they first came into existence.” He pauses and then adds, “When the andar came to ask us to help them fight the demons.”

“That’s what it says in the book,” Bobby says slowly.

“Yeah, it is,” Sam agrees, and then falls silent. Challenging. Dean is silent as well, but there’s a hopeful, trusting look on his face that Bobby can’t help responding to. Against his better judgment, he considers what Sam is telling him.

The thing of it is, with the boys sitting in front of him, it doesn’t seem quite so far fetched anymore. Or maybe Bobby’s just that desperate.

“Say I believe you. What then?”

“We need you to keep the rest of the hunters off our backs,” Dean tells him. “We had to discourage a few over the last three months, and sooner or later someone’s gonna get hurt.”

Bobby has no doubt that when blood is spilled, it won’t be Winchester. “What else?” he asks.

With an encouraged tilt to his eyebrows, Dean leans forward. “You’re going to Harvelle’s,” he says. “To the meeting.”

Bobby starts despite himself. That meeting’s supposed to be a secret, and he doesn’t think any hunter would willingly tell the Winchesters what was going on. Not these days.

“How’d you know about that?” he demands.

“We hear things,” Sam says, and eases back in his chair. Still distrusting, still intent and so damned focused Bobby gets the impression he’s looking for an excuse. Bobby’s doing his best not to give him one.

“The point is,” Dean continues, with a meaningful look at his brother, “We’ve got some information you need to give them. You’ve seen the signs, right?”

“Don’t think I could’ve missed them if I tried,” Bobby admits.

“Someone’s coming. Sam and I have heard it from a few different demons now, and we’re pretty sure we know who it is.”

It’s the last thing Bobby expected to hear. “Who?” he asks.

“Lilith.” Sam again, and his lips are curling up in a way that makes Bobby feel like a plump canary. “I have it on good authority that she’s a grade A bitch.”

“So spread the word, all right?” Dean says, pushing back his chair.

Sam stands as well, and Bobby understands belatedly that that’s it: the interview is over. Struggling to his own feet, he says, “Hang on a second, boys. If that book wasn’t a crock of shit, then we need you, damn it.”

“We’ll be around,” Dean tells him with a tone of finality that Bobby can’t bring himself to argue with. What was he gonna do with them, anyway? If he walked into Harvelle’s with the Winchesters on his heels, he’d just get them all shot.

Himself, anyway: he kind of doubts that anything as simple as a bullet is going to take Sam or Dean down at this point.

With his eyes fastened on Bobby, Dean sticks out his hand. His expression is uncertain, as if he thinks Bobby will refuse the gesture, and Bobby’s throat closes up on him. For the first time he knows, right down to his marrow, that this is Dean in front of him. Not just something that looks like him and has his memories, but the man himself.

He grabs Dean’s extended hand and then, instead of shaking it, uses it to pull the boy into a hug. This time Sam doesn’t move: just watches him with a still, considering mien.

Dean looks a little dazed when Bobby lets him go, but his smile is so damned bright and blinding. Free. Happy.

Been a long time since Bobby saw that look on the boy’s face.

In a voice huskier than Bobby would like, he says, “You need me, you call.” It’s a ludicrous offer—as if the two of them would ever need an old man’s help—but Dean’s smile widens and he claps Bobby on the shoulder.

“Pass the word that we’re here. If they decide they want help,” Dean says. Sam makes a face at that, but doesn’t argue.

Throwing a glance at his brother, Dean announces, “I’ll be in the car. Good seeing you, Bobby.” He turns around and heads for the door, moving loose and rangy. Every last head in the room turns to track him—wondering, longing—and Bobby knows what they’re all thinking because he’s thinking it himself.

Beautiful.

“He doesn’t have any idea, does he?” Bobby murmurs, half to himself.

“No, he doesn’t,” Sam agrees.

Bobby turns back to him. Without Dean’s facilitating easiness, it’s awkward between them, and Bobby catches a glimpse of what life must have been like for John before his youngest took off for the greener pastures of academia. Sam’s still looking at him with that heavy, calculating gaze, and Bobby has to resist the urge to fidget before him.

“You’ll take care of him,” Bobby says. It’s not quite a question, but he doesn’t have the authority to make it an order. Not that he thinks he needs to.

“Always,” Sam agrees, and then purses his lips briefly. “Look, I owe you an apology.”

“What?” Bobby says, startled.

“I didn’t think you’d believe us.” The words are reluctant. Boy can rival his old man when it comes to holding grudges. “He wanted to see you sooner, but I. I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

But Bobby thinks back on the last few years—on how angry he’d been when he realized Sam had ditched them all, at the threat: on how foolishly certain he was until the skies rained down fire and the rivers turned to blood and everything he knew to be true was turned on its ass. He isn’t sure that Sam wasn’t right to keep his distance before now.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been,” he tells him. “But things change.”

“Yeah, they do.” Sam angles his head and the light catches his eyes. “I would never hurt him, Bobby.”

“Yeah.”

“But I appreciate you trying to look out for him. God knows I’m having a hell of a time getting him to do that for himself.”

“You seem to be doing okay,” Bobby says, and when Sam brightens a bit he catches a glimpse of the chubby boy who used to trail his brother around the salvage yard with the devout hero worship of the very young and innocent.

Sam sticks his hand out as well, and when Bobby takes it he finds himself pulled in for a hug. Up close, Sam smells muskier than he used to, and Bobby catches a whiff of leather. Sam isn’t wearing any, but Dean was.

Everything else considered, it doesn’t bother him too much.

“Be careful with Lilith,” Sam tells him as they part. “She isn’t a normal demon.”

“You’ve met her,” Bobby says, surprised.

Sam gives his head a little shake and then says, “Yes. No. I’ve seen her. In my visions. When there were visions.” Then, reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a piece of paper. “Call us when you need us.”

‘When’, and not ‘if.’ Bobby takes the phone number, fingering the slip of paper as Sam starts for the door.

“Sam?” he calls.

Sam hesitates, glancing back.

“You take care of yourself too, son.”

Sam flashes him a wry half-smile and heads for the door again. Watching the patrons turn to follow him with their eyes, Bobby thinks that Dean isn’t the only one who doesn’t quite understand the effect he has on people. Doesn’t know what catching a glimpse of something like that does to a person.

He looks down at the number in his hand and realizes that there’s writing on the back. Turning it over, he reads, “ _Bellum omnium in omnes._ ”

A war of all against all.

It’s Sam’s parting message to him, but Bobby doesn’t need the warning. He already knew what’s coming when he decided to show at this damned meeting of Harvelle’s. Knew that it’s high time for the hunters to get their act together: for all those alpha dogs to fall in line and step smart.

The world teeters on the edge of night, and the hunters are stuck watching the light fade from the sky. Scattered. Divided in mind and spirit.

But there are other things in the night, keeping watch on the ridges and slipping through the low grass.

John’s boys, standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the coming darkness.

Over the jukebox country, Bobby thinks he can hear the roar of a familiar engine gunning out of the parking lot. The other patrons have gone back to what they were doing, but he notices that some of the women have a far off look in their eyes. One of the men keeps touching his side where a hunter would keep a gun: a knight his sword.

Old times come again, stirring old hungers. Stirring the blood.

 _Bellum omnium in omnes_ , Bobby thinks, and rubs his fingers against the slip of paper like a talisman.

He finishes the drink Sam bought him: a grim shot of courage to last him through the night. Then, leaving a twenty on the bar to cover the evening’s tab, he heads out to the truck he’s using these days. It’s on its last legs, but he thinks he might be able to make it to Harvelle’s without breaking down in only two hours if he pushes the engine to its limit.

He has a message to deliver.


	38. Afterward and Acknowledgments

Well, there you have it.

I hope it was worth the wait and all the teasing I’ve done. ::is evil::

I apologize for the mangling of Norse Mythology. I took the roots that were lying there and tweaked them around for my own purposes. If anyone is intrigued enough by _Fetters_ that they would like to read more about that particular belief system, then as a good introductory text I would recommend [Myths of the Norsemen](http://www.amazon.com/Myths-Norsemen-Eddas-H-Guerber/dp/0486273482/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product).

Regarding the ending: I don’t know that I will ever write the story of the coming war. I don’t know that it’s _necessary_ to write it. The boys have a hell of a fight before them _(quite literally)_ , but they’ll be together in it. Two-as-one both within themselves and with each other. Now they have Bobby on their side as well, and as the cougar pointed out, he makes a good ally. I’m optimistic about their chances.

Which brings us to the acknowledgments.

Thanks go first and foremost to beta goddess, who held my hand through the whole thing and routinely tells me I don’t suck when I’m being neurotic. I seriously couldn’t ask for a better beta, or a better friend, and I am sooooo grateful to you for taking the time to clean _Fetters_ up with me, despite the angst and the wordiness. Hug fic is the next major project on my list: promise.

Second, if you haven’t yet taken a looksee at nilsi_pilsifan’s artwork, then please [head on over](http://community.livejournal.com/crisisarrives/24183.html) and do so now. Those of you on my flist know how much I love having my work illustrated, and she did a fantastic job. Darling, your art is beautiful, and wonderful, and I adore it. Thank you so much!

Third, thanks to both celaeno7 and dracothelizard for all of your technical help with the fic. celaeno7 helped me out with Ash’s computer knowledge _(I’m back in the stone age with Dean and Bobby for the most part myself)_. dracothelizard lent a hand with the Old Norse. Everything right is theirs: all mistakes are mine from subsequent edits I did. ::grins:: Thanks, you two!

Fourth, thanks go to wendy and audrarose for setting this whole thing up. Organizing so many of us can’t have been easy, but you two did it, and things have come together wonderfully! It’s been a ride and a half, guys, and none of it would’ve been possible without you!

Fifth, thanks to moonstone1220 for inadvertently prompting this thing out of me. Took me a while to get you your new berserker!verse fic, but, uh, hopefully this makes up for the wait. ;)

And last, but not least, thanks to all of you lovely readers for coming along for the ride, and for all the words of encouragement and support you’ve offered along the way. To borrow a phrase from Dean, it makes me all tingly to know that I’m bringing other people enjoyment with my writing.

That’s it, I think! Until next time! ::hugs::


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